By Julie Ros, SVP, Head of Marketing, Communications & Institutional Growth, tZERO
For the past several years, the tokenisation industry has been asking the same question: What assets can we tokenise next?
Treasuries. Money market funds. Private credit. Real estate. Equities. Commodities. Intellectual property. Nearly every week brings another announcement celebrating another asset moving on chain.
Those developments matter. They demonstrate that tokenisation has moved into real-world applications. More importantly, they validate that blockchain can support regulated financial markets at institutional scale.
But as the industry matures, I believe we’re approaching a more important question.
It’s no longer what we can tokenise.
It’s what tokenisation makes possible.
That distinction struck me while reading a recent interview with Thomas Sy of New York Life Investment Management. Rather than focusing on the next tokenised asset, Sy described a future in which blockchain enables highly personalised portfolios and more efficient investment management. It was a subtle shift in perspective, but an important one. Instead of viewing tokenisation as the product, he views it as the infrastructure that makes entirely new approaches to investing possible.
I think that marks an important milestone for our industry.
From proving the technology to applying it
Every major technology follows a similar path.
The early years are spent proving it works. Demonstrating the concept. Building confidence. Convincing the market that the technology can solve real problems.
Eventually, the conversation changes.
The internet stopped being about websites and became the foundation for entirely new business models. Cloud computing stopped being about moving servers off-premises and became the platform that enabled software companies to scale globally.
Tokenisation is reaching a similar point.
The industry’s early focus on tokenising individual assets has been necessary. Institutions needed proof that securities could be issued, traded, settled and serviced on blockchain infrastructure within existing regulatory frameworks.
Today, that foundation is steadily taking shape. Asset managers, broker-dealers, custodians, transfer agents and market infrastructure providers are all investing in tokenisation, each contributing a different piece of the ecosystem. The conversation is gradually shifting from whether tokenisation works to what becomes possible because it works.
That’s a much more interesting discussion.
Rethinking How Portfolios Are Built
One point in particular illustrates why this shift in thinking matters.
Much of today’s investment industry is built around standardised products. Investors can certainly construct personalised portfolios, but doing so often means combining multiple funds, ETFs, bonds, private credit strategies and other investments – each with its own operational requirements. As portfolios become more customised, the complexity and cost of administering them also increases.
Sy’s point is that tokenisation has the potential to change that dynamic.
Rather than relying on layers of operational processes to customise portfolios, blockchain infrastructure creates the opportunity to embed more of that customisation within the assets themselves. In other words, the technology isn’t simply creating digital versions of existing investments; it’s creating the potential for those investments to interact more efficiently within a portfolio.
That shift may sound subtle, but its implications are significant. If tokenised assets can simplify transfer agency, settlement and other back-office functions, the operational costs of managing increasingly customised portfolios could fall considerably. Lower administrative costs, greater automation and more efficient servicing ultimately benefit investors while making personalised investment strategies more scalable than they are today.
Viewed through that lens, tokenisation isn’t just about digitising individual assets. It’s about modernising the infrastructure that sits beneath portfolio construction itself.
Infrastructure creates innovation
One of the challenges facing tokenisation is that many of its most important benefits are largely invisible.
Few investors think about settlement cycles, transfer agency, reconciliation or post-trade operations when they build a portfolio. Yet these processes consume significant amounts of time, capital and operational resources throughout today’s financial system.
Modernising that infrastructure may not generate headlines in the same way as launching a new tokenised fund, but it creates meaningful value across the entire market.
- Lower operational costs
- Greater automation
- Faster settlement
- Improved transparency
- More efficient servicing
These improvements are incremental individually, but collectively they enable innovation that simply isn’t practical under legacy infrastructure.
History shows that infrastructure rarely attracts the most attention. It creates the conditions that allow entirely new business models to emerge.
Building an interconnected market
Another reason this moment feels significant is the breadth of institutions now participating in the evolution of tokenised markets.
Banks are exploring tokenised deposits and collateral. Asset managers are launching tokenised investment products. Broker-dealers are developing new distribution models, while custodians and market infrastructure providers continue modernising issuance, trading, settlement and servicing.
These efforts are often viewed independently, but together they point toward something much larger: a more interconnected capital markets ecosystem where assets, participants and infrastructure communicate more seamlessly than they do today.
That interoperability may ultimately prove to be one of tokenisation’s greatest strengths.
The next frontier is programmability
Looking further ahead, I believe one of blockchain’s most significant contributions to financial markets will be programmability.
Digital-native assets don’t simply exist in electronic form. They can interact with rules, workflows and other financial systems in ways that traditional infrastructure struggles to support.
- Compliance can become more automated
- Corporate actions can become more efficient
- Collateral management can become more dynamic
- Portfolio management can become increasingly intelligent
Additionally, as artificial intelligence becomes more deeply embedded across financial services, programmable digital assets may provide the infrastructure that allows AI-driven investment strategies to operate within well-defined regulatory and risk management frameworks.
The conversation is no longer just about digitizing existing markets.
It’s about enabling markets to operate differently.
Looking ahead
The next phase of tokenisation may not be defined by the next asset that moves on-chain.
It may be defined by the new capabilities that emerge once a growing range of assets share modern, interoperable infrastructure.
- Personalised portfolios
- Smarter automation
- More efficient capital formation
- Continuous markets
New investment models that are difficult – or impossible – to deliver through today’s legacy systems.
That is why I believe we’ve reached an important turning point.
The industry’s biggest opportunity is no longer simply tokenising assets. It is building the infrastructure that allows financial markets to become more connected, more efficient and ultimately more adaptable to the needs of investors.
That’s a much bigger opportunity than creating another tokenised product.
We’ve spent the last several years proving that tokenisation is possible. The next several years will be about proving why it matters. And if the industry gets that right, we won’t simply have tokenised today’s financial markets – we’ll have built a better foundation for tomorrow’s.
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