Demystifying Tokenization: Industry Experts Discuss How the Technology Could Realistically Change What, When, and How We Trade
- BridgePort
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Published in Curatia
By Jason Dibble, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, March 12 2026
Is tokenization revolutionary or evolutionary? How will it impact asset classes differently? Could it exacerbate liquidity fragmentation? Who will benefit more from the technology — institutions or retail traders? Are vertically-integrated trading venues a path to efficiency or a peril?
To get answers to the most pressing tokenization questions in finance today, we sought a diversity of perspectives from senior experts in both crypto and traditional finance at firms including Bloomberg, Flow Traders, and EDX Markets.
Our tokenization roundtable discussion features five participants:
Michael Lie, Global Head of Digital Assets at European market maker Flow Traders
Dushyant Shahrawat, Senior Analyst, Crypto and Digital Assets Market Structure at leading market-data provider Bloomberg
Joe Lau, President & Co-Founder of blockchain development platform Alchemy
Chris Soriano, Co-Founder & CCO at institutional crypto middleware platform BridgePort
Dave Olsson, CCO at crypto exchange EDX Markets
1. Is tokenization a major opportunity to revolutionize trading by expanding into new asset classes or merely a set of incremental infrastructure improvements? Why?
Flow Traders Global Head of Digital Assets Michael Lie
From our perspective, the current wave of tokenization reminds us of the early days of ETFs — not in terms of scale yet, but in how it forces market participants to rethink access, liquidity, and settlement. It’s not just about putting assets on-chain; it’s about rebuilding the larger market structure for a 24/7 world. I genuinely believe the next decade of capital markets will be defined by continuous access, programmable assets, and global liquidity layers.
We feel this way because we had a front row seat to this same movie, except it was about ETFs instead of tokenization. ETFs scaled because they standardized access, simplified complexity, and brought liquidity discipline into new parts of the market globally. Ultimately, we plan to do what we did for the ETF market 20 years ago for the nascent tokenized asset markets that exist today.
2. What key benefits could tokenization offer in your corner of the trading world? What surprising trading impacts could tokenization have on your domain?
Flow Traders Global Head of Digital Assets Michael Lie
From a trading perspective, much like ETFs, tokenization is a market structure breakthrough. The market structure that currently exists around ETFs works well because there’s a tight arbitrage loop between the ETF itself, the underlying assets it holds, and a primary market process that keeps prices aligned.
Now, just to make this tangible, let’s take one example: A broad ‘global’ equity ETF holds stocks across Asia, Europe, and the U.S. As a liquidity provider, our job is to price the ETF continuously, even when parts of the underlying basket aren’t trading at that moment. If we’re pricing that “global equity ETF” during Asian hours, the U.S. market is closed, but the ETF still has names like Tesla inside it.
As a result, by trading ETFs, liquidity providers like us have spent the past 20 years developing the skillset to answer: What is Tesla stock worth right now, even though its primary market is closed? That exact skillset, pricing and managing risk across liquidity boundaries, translates directly into 24/7 tokenized markets.
Bloomberg Crypto and Digital Assets Market Structure Senior Analyst Dushyant Shahrawat
Programmable collateral and atomic settlement are the two big advantages. Nasdaq research says tokenization can prevent one in eight failed trades, and collateral management using blockchain technology could unlock $100B+ in capital annually.
Tokenized equities on Solana grew 2,878% YoY to nearly $1 billion, with Kamino Finance already accepting them as collateral in its $2.6B lending protocol. BlackRock’s BUIDL and Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX aren’t experiments anymore — they’re already dissolving the boundary between crypto and TradFi. Put on your seat belts!
Alchemy President & Co-Founder Joe Lau
Vertical integration is appealing in finance. If issuance, trading, clearing, and settlement live in one system, a lot of the friction disappears. But financial infrastructure has always been designed with separation for a reason: concentrated risk breaks systems.
Institutions like JPMorgan, Robinhood, and Stripe know the pattern that works best is modular. The strongest players assemble best-in-class components and keep clear accountability at the boundaries.
Vertical integration can show what’s possible, but long-term institutional markets usually converge on open, interoperable infrastructure rather than single-stack platforms.
BridgePort Co-Founder & CCO Chris Soriano
It’s clear where the benefits of tokenization are most obvious: the settlement and collateral side. We know institutions are sitting on enormous amounts of trapped capital right now, pre-funding trades just to manage counterparty risk that better infrastructure could largely eliminate.
That cost isn’t theoretical. It’s real, and it shows up in everything from spreads to how aggressively firms are willing to quote — and perhaps most importantly, the impact on natural liquidity sitting on the sidelines.
