Next Stop in Tokenisation: Gold

From bullion to bets, everything can be tokenised—and stablecoins are the rails that make it work

In a recent opinion piece in The Economist, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink made a comparison that caught the attention of the financial world. He argued that tokenisation will have an impact on finance similar to what the internet had on communication—a transformation so fundamental that it will reshape how we think about ownership, investment, and value transfer.

Larry Fink has been talking about tokenisation for quite some time now, whether in his 2025 New Year Letter or more recently in the Middle East at the FII Institute.

Many before him have also been talking about this one phenomenon. Over 7 years ago, Circle’s Jeremy Allaire was already talking expansively about the “tokenisation of everything”. But now the phenomenon is moving from being a prediction to becoming real and having a impact on financial markets. Thus it can’t be ignored anymore.

What Exactly Is Tokenisation?

At its core, tokenisation is the process of creating a digital version of a real-world asset—like gold, property, or shares—on a secure digital system known as a blockchain. The token itself acts as a shared, verifiable record of ownership that everyone in the system can see and trust. Instead of relying on separate institutions to track who owns what and trying to reconcile their individual records, the token holds that information directly, making transfers faster, simpler, and more transparent.

You can think of it like a paper certificate of ownership, but one that exists digitally on a secure network: it cannot be destroyed or altered without agreement among participants, can be accessed from anywhere with the right authorisation, and can be read or processed automatically and independently by systems built to work with it.

The question naturally arises: why would anyone want to do this? Several forces are driving this transformation:

• Tokenisation improves infrastructure and settlement. Blockchain-based systems can operate 24/7, settle instantly, and embed rules and logic that reduce friction across the financial system. Unlike traditional markets, which rely on multiple intermediaries and human intervention, tokenised markets offer a single source of truth and automated governance¹.

• Tokenisation broadens access to complex financial products. As Simplify’s Michael Green noted, in tokenised financial markets, sophistication no longer implies exclusivity or high costs. Structured products, bonds, or venture investments can now reach a much wider set of investors without the layers of intermediaries that previously limited participation.

• Fractionalisation further democratises investing. High-value assets—from art and real estate to commodities—can be divided into small, tradable units. This unbundling allows individuals to participate in markets that were once the preserve of the wealthy, while also enabling new forms of liquidity and programmable investment structures.

What’s Being Tokenised?

The range of assets being tokenised today is remarkably diverse. The most well known real world asset being tokenised is fiat money. Stablecoins are nothing less than a representation on a blockchain chain of fiat currency.

But beyond fiat currency, the examples of what is being tokenised are much broader. Here are a few examples:

• Precious metals like gold (Tether, Paxos, MKS PAMP—see below)

• Computing resources such as GPUs (io.net)

• Internet connectivity (Giga)

• Company shares (increasingly being tokenised on regulated digital platforms)

• Voting rights (prediction markets such as Kalshi and Polymarket)

• Real estate

• And countless other real-world assets

The scope is limited only by imagination… and, understandably, regulatory frameworks.

A Closer Look: Gold Tokenisation

Gold provides a particularly instructive example. In our current era of economic uncertainty, gold is making headlines as investors seek safe-haven assets. China for example seems to be hoarding gold like there is no tomorrow. However, actually owning physical gold presents significant practical challenges: