Securitize CEO, a BlackRock partner: Why has asset tokenization become a mainstream topic on Wall Street? In the past six months, asset tokenization has suddenly taken off. On one hand, regulatory attitudes have noticeably loosened, and on the other, top-tier institutions like BlackRock are getting directly involved—Wall Street can’t ignore it even if they wanted to. Tokenization isn’t about creating new assets out of thin air; it’s about using blockchain to upgrade the financial market’s 'ledger': cutting out middlemen, reducing costs, and making settlements faster and more efficient. The fastest to go live aren’t real estate or art, but highly liquid assets like stablecoins, treasuries, and bonds, where the advantages of being on-chain are the most obvious. Once technologies like atomic settlement mature, traditional assets like stocks will also gradually move to on-chain trading and settlement.