Tokenization: the new race
Plus: the “no comment” FOMC, the market action and reaction, and more
“Our lives teem with numbers, but we sometimes forget that numbers are only tools. They have no soul; they may indeed become fetishes.” – Peter L. Bernstein ||
Hey everyone! I hope you’re all doing well and staying dry – yesterday’s beautiful flurry of snow here in Madrid was all-too brief and has been replaced by sogginess. Despite what the pronunciation song would have you believe, the rain in Spain does NOT stay mainly on the plain.
Yesterday, I was a guest on Scott Melker’s live The Wolf of All Streets show which was, as always with Scott, a lot of fun. You can see the playback here.
And a podcast recording I did with the AllInCrypto team last week is now out – you can see/listen to that here.
PUBLISHED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH: ✨ ALLIUM ✨
As traditional finance and crypto converge, trusted data is the missing infrastructure layer. Allium provides this data foundation for teams like Visa, Stripe and Grayscale.
Our latest whitepaper published with Visa, Stablecoins Beyond Payments: The Onchain Lending Opportunity, examines how banks can access emerging credit markets. Looking at the data, outstanding onchain loans reached over $40Bn this year, with stablecoins making up more than half of borrowed assets.
If you’re producing institutional crypto research or analytics, start with trusted data. Explore a live demo.
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
Tokenization: the new race
A “no comment” FOMC
Markets: the reaction and the action
Crypto is Macro Now offers ~daily commentary and updates on the overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes. Plus links, a music recommendation (‘cos why not?), and more.
If you’re a premium subscriber, thank you!! ❤
WHAT I’M WATCHING:
Tokenization: the new race
There comes an inevitable point in the evolution of new technologies where momentum kicks in and doors open. That may sound like a gift to entrepreneurs exhausted from knocking on those doors and pounding the table about the transformative nature of what their teams are building. It’s not: that moment is when the race begins.
When it comes to onchain “real-world” assets, we’re there. It kicked off at the beginning of this year.
Regular readers of this newsletter are no doubt aware that adoption has been picking up over the years as new types of issuance, some backed by big tradfi names, elbow their way into portfolios and financial flows. We’ve also seen regulators around the world tackle the issue of how to embed tokenized assets into existing systems, while fielding demands for entirely new networks. In other words, for those of us in the trenches, tokenization has been a big topic for ages – I started writing about it for CoinDesk back in 2017. Back then, I was mainly focused on describing the goalposts while poking holes in the irritating hype (no, we’re not going to tokenize “everything”). In Crypto is Macro Now, I’ve focused on institutional interest as well as official pilots and the creep of regulation. But over the past few weeks, things have changed. Even just going by this week’s headlines, that creep is becoming a full-throated charge.
In December, we learnt that the DTCC – the backbone infrastructure for the US equity market – is building a tokenization platform. Last week, the NYSE announced plans to launch a tokenized stock trading platform. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve seen tokenization initiatives or expansions from SWIFT, the London Stock Exchange, State Street and more.
And then this week, we got high-signal moves from the European Central Bank (ECB), and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
