Davos takeaway on Larry Fink’s tokenization thesis:
Tokenization as a must, not a choice. A required step in financial infrastructure evolution.
Tokenization plus decimalization in the same direction. Smaller trade units, broader participation, more granular markets.
The irony: emerging markets lead. Brazil and India at the front of currency tokenization and digitization. Developed markets, including the US, framed as moving slower.
Not a slow roll. He pushed urgency, move very fast.
Five concrete benefits he listed
• Fee reduction: “We would be reducing fees”
• Financial democratization: lower fees open access
• Cross asset liquidity: tokenized money market funds, stocks, bonds move freely
• Less corruption: “We could reduce corruption” via blockchain transparency
• Stronger security: “activities are probably processed and more secure than ever before”
Endgame vision: One Common Blockchain where all investable assets run on a shared chain.
• Instant switching: tokenized MMF to stocks to bonds.
• Asset conversion without intermediaries.
• Big drop in middle costs, stronger access for more people.
• More efficient processing plus better security.
• More transparency, less corruption.
Risk he acknowledged: “yes, we have more dependencies on maybe one blockchain.”
He still argued the benefits outweigh that dependency risk.
His framing on why transparency matters
• SVB’s collapse: tech failure not the core issue, regulation failure.
• Faster information flow helps markets converge on fair value faster.
• Tokenization as the next step in that transparency and efficiency arc.
