If the vision of Larry Fink — CEO of BlackRock, the world’s biggest money manager — becomes reality, all assets from stocks to bonds to real estate and more would be tradable online, on a blockchain.
“Every asset — can be tokenized,” Fink wrote in his recent annual letter to investors.
Unlike traditional paper certificates signifying financial ownership, tokens live securely on a blockchain, enabling instant buying, selling, and transfers without paperwork or waiting — “much like a digital deed,” he wrote.
Fink says it would be nothing short of a “revolution” for investing. Think 24-hour markets and a trading settlement process that can be compacted down into seconds from a process that today can still take days, with billions of dollars reinvested immediately back into the economy.
But there’s one big problem, one technology challenge that stands in the way: the lack of a coordinated digital identity verification system.
While technology experts say Fink’s idea isn’t improbable, they agree that there are cybersecurity challenges ahead in making it work.
