BlackRock Predicts a Tokenized Future for Global Markets
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and COO Rob Goldstein have positioned tokenization as the next evolutionary leap in financial infrastructure, drawing parallels to the early internet's transformative potential. Their essay in The Economist argues that digital asset representation could modernize global markets faster than anticipated, citing a 300% growth in real-world asset tokenization over the past 20 months.
The firm's BUIDL tokenized money-market fund has surpassed $2 billion in assets, demonstrating tangible institutional demand. Tokenization promises to streamline settlement processes, enhance transparency, and consolidate diverse asset classes into single digital wallets—a shift comparable to SWIFT's introduction in 1977 or blockchain's emergence in 2009.