Tokenization still at start of hype cycle, but needs more use cases, specialists say

Finance Share Share this article Copy link X icon X (Twitter) LinkedIn Facebook Email Tokenization still at start of hype cycle, but needs more use cases, specialists say Crypto asset specialists must figure out how to match tokenization hype to real-world utility, Securitize's Graham Ferguson said. By Ian Allison | Edited by Nikhilesh De Feb 11, 2026, 10:21 a.m. Make us preferred on Google Left to right: Graham Ferguson, head of ecosystem at Securitize; Min Lin, managing director of global expansion at Ondo; and Coindesk’s Kris Sandor (CoinDesk) What to know : Securitize’s approach, which is about issuing regulated securities natively on blockchains, “has always been to do this in lockstep with regulators.” Ondo’s quick to scale wrapper model has been widely adopted: stablecoins are wrapped U.S. dollars. If there is a classic technology hype cycle attached to tokenization — the representation of any asset on blockchains like Ethereum — we are barely getting started. That was the view of Min Lin, managing director of global expansion at Ondo, who pointed out the U.S. Treasuries market alone is worth $29 trillion. Adding in the global equities market pushes that value closer to $127 trillion, of which $69 trillion is in the U.S. alone, Lin said at CoinDesk's Consensus Hong Kong conference . STORY CONTINUES BELOW Don't miss another story. Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today . See all newsletters Sign me up By signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policy . But while the numbers are dizzying, and there is no doubt demand from traditional finance to explore tokenized real world assets (RWAs), there has to be care and attention when it comes to matching the hype to real world utility, said Graham Ferguson, head of ecosystem at Securitize. “It's incumbent on us to figure out how we distribute these and I think, historically, we haven't done a great job of ascribing utility to these assets,” Ferguson said. “We have all these assets that we could tokenize. We have tons of different choices. We have to, we have to figure out, how do we unite that hype, how do we bring that together.” It’s important not to “jump the gun on the regulatory side of things,” Ferguson of Securitize pointed out. That said, the U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is waking up to the idea that tokenization can form the plumbing of future markets, and does not mean just “isolated compliance islands.” “We've been around for a while talking about the benefits of settlement when it comes to tokenization and programmatic compliance built into the token standard itself, transferability of these assets among KYC’d [know-your-customer] individuals,” Ferguson said. ”We're really excited for the regulatory clarity. No pun intended.” Ondo’s focus is on efficiency. The firm has been busy tokenizing stocks and EFTs and recently announced the introduction of Ondo Perps, whereby those tokenized equities can be used as collateral margin directly — rather than using stablecoins as collateral on exchanges or DEXs, Lin explained. Essentially, these firms’ different approaches to tokenization involve two design choices: in the case of Ondo, it’s about quickly and easily wrapping assets in a token; with Securitize, it comes down to issuing securities natively on chain and smoothing out the jurisdictional compliance wrinkles associated with that process. Securitze’s approach “has always been to do this in lockstep with regulators,” Ferguson said. “So in the US and the EU, or regulated as a transfer agent, as a broker dealer, and we've always kind of done things by the book,” he said. This comes with challenges when working with DeFi protocols, Ferguson acknowledged, because of the need to track who the beneficial owner of an asset is at every point in time. “In crypto and DeFi, we're used to massive pools of assets, so we are fixated on figuring out ways of working with these protocols so that we're able to implement the same tracking mechanisms that are required in order to trade and transfer securities. And so it's not necessarily the most DeFi comfortable approach,” Ferguson said. For Lin of Ondo, tokenization falls into either a permissionless camp and a permissioned camp. For example, OUSG, the Ondo Short-Term US Treasuries Fund is available for a global audience, and is permissioned which means users are able to transfer this asset to whitelisted addresses only. On the other hand, Ondo Global Markets tokenizes publicly traded U.S. stocks and ETFs, which is permissionless following a given compliance period, but is only available to investors outside the U.S. “What we have done at Ondo is a wrapper model for our Ondo global markets products,” Lin said. “That permissionless approach allows for us to operate and transfer freely from peer to peer within DeFi. So you're able to use DeFi protocols to be able to leverage those products in lending and collateral margin.” When it comes to tokenizing anything and everything, there’s no doubt this wrapping approach will get results faster; Ondo was able to tokenize BitGo stock some 15 minutes after the firm started trading on public markets, for instance. “This wrapper model is essentially allowing us to scale much quicker. Today, we have around 200 plus tokenized stocks and ETFs. We're looking to be able to scale that to thousands,” Lin said. “The wrapper model has been widely adopted. Stablecoins are essentially wrapped U.S. dollars and we have adopted a very similar model." Consensus Hong Kong 2026 Tokenization More For You Arkham Intelligence said to be shutting crypto trading platform as usage fails to sparkle By Ian Allison | Edited by Sheldon Reback 59 minutes ago Data analytics firm Arkham Intel first floated the idea of adding a crypto derivatives exchange in late 2024. What to know : Data intelligence firm Arkham is planning to shutter its crypto exchange platform. Arkham was founded in 2020 and now boasts over 3 million registered users. Arkham did not respond to requests for comment. 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