Tokenized Assets and Securities

Abstract

Tokenization is a relatively new activity in digital finance. The standard features and characteristics of assets and securities can be enhanced by tokenization, a process that creates a blockchain representation of the underlying instrument. Asset and security tokenization produces many benefits. These benefits include reducing issuance and trading costs, lessening dependency on intermediaries, facilitating more liquidity in markets, and providing greater transparency around an asset’s lifecycle for all parties involved. This chapter synthesizes the key characteristics, benefits, processes, tools, and techniques of tokenizing real-world assets. It also provides several examples of current asset-backed token applications to help understand the rapidly growing industry and analyzes future expectations of this new technology.

Keywords: Tokenization, asset-backed tokens, asset tokenization, security tokenization

JEL Classification: G10, G20, G30