BlackRock’s Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein say tokenization could do for finance what the early internet did for information

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and COO Rob Goldstein said tokenization is emerging as a transformative force across global markets, comparing its potential impact to the rise of the early internet.

Writing in The Economist on Monday and also published on BlackRock’s website, the executives argued that recording asset ownership on digital ledgers could modernize the financial system by enhancing efficiency, transparency, and access. “Ledgers haven’t been this exciting since the invention of double-entry bookkeeping,” they wrote.

The executives described tokenization as the next stage in a long arc of technological change. In the 1970s, trades were placed by phone and settled through courier-delivered paper certificates, Fink recalled from the early days of his career. The arrival of SWIFT in 1977, introducing standardized electronic messaging between banks, cutting settlement times dramatically from days to minutes, with global trades now able to execute in milliseconds.

Blockchain technology, first deployed by Satoshi Nakamoto with Bitcoin in 2009, introduced a shared digital ledger that could record transactions without intermediaries. That breakthrough set the stage for tokenization, allowing almost any asset — from real estate to corporate debt or currency — to exist on a single digital record that market participants can independently verify, the pair said.

“At first it was hard for the financial world — including us — to see the big idea,” Fink and Goldstein wrote. “Tokenization was tangled up in the crypto boom, which often looked like speculation. But in recent years traditional finance has seen what was hiding beneath the hype: tokenization can greatly expand the world of investable assets beyond the listed stocks and bonds that dominate markets today.”

BlackRock has already begun experimenting with its own tokenized products, most notably through its BUIDL tokenized U.S. money market fund, which runs on public blockchain infrastructure with over $2 billion in total value locked, according to The Block’s data dashboard. The asset management giant also broadened its digital asset footprint in recent years by launching spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs — dominating both product classes with $62.6 billion and $13.2 billion worth of net inflows, respectively.

A bridge between traditional and digital finance

Fink and Goldstein highlighted two primary advantages of tokenization: the potential for instantaneous settlement and the replacement of paper-heavy private-market processes with code. Standardizing instant settlement across global markets would reduce counterparty risk, while digitizing private assets could lower costs, improve trade efficiency, and turn large, illiquid holdings into smaller, more accessible units for broader participation, they said.

There are early signs of progress, the executives continued, noting that while tokens representing real-world assets remain a small share of global markets, they are growing fast — up roughly 300% in the last 20 months.

Much of the early adoption, according to the pair, is occurring in developing economies where banking access is limited. Meanwhile, the U.S. still hosts many of the companies best positioned to lead a tokenized financial system, though Fink and Goldstein cautioned that early advantages can erode. Tokenization today, they argued, is at a stage similar to the internet in 1996 — when Amazon had sold just $16 million worth of books, and three of the rest of today’s “Magnificent Seven” tech giants hadn’t even been founded — early, fast-moving, and likely to expand more quickly than most expect, with enormous growth over the coming decades.

Rather than replacing the existing financial system anytime soon, Fink and Goldstein framed tokenization as a bridge between traditional institutions and “digital-first innovators” such as stablecoin issuers, fintechs, and public blockchains. In their view, investors will eventually buy, sell, and hold all asset types — from stocks and bonds to digital assets — through a single digital wallet.

Fink and Goldstein called on policymakers and regulators to update existing regulatory frameworks rather than create entirely new ones, emphasizing that “a bond is still a bond, even if it lives on a blockchain.” Safeguards, they argued, should include clear buyer protections, strong counterparty-risk standards, and robust digital-identity verification systems to support trust and safe participation. Tokenization, they concluded, can make markets more inclusive, but must “move faster and move safely,” matching expanded access with modernized guardrails.