Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, has positioned tokenisation as a key opportunity to unlock accessibility and efficiency in capital markets.
In his 2025 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors, Fink stressed the importance of tokenisation in fostering productivity.
He said: “Every stock, every bond, every fund every asset—can be tokenised. If they are, it will revolutionise investing.”
Tokenisation offers investors a new degree of democratisation, for instance, the abilities of fractional ownership, he added.
This lowers one of the barriers to investing in valuable, previously inaccessible assets like private real estate and private equity, according to Fink.
“If they are [tokenised], it will revolutionize investing. Markets wouldn’t need to close. Transactions that currently take days would clear in seconds,
“And billions of dollars currently immobilised by settlement delays could be reinvested immediately back into the economy, generating more growth,” said Fink.
Shareholder voting and yield will also be democratised through the digital nature and accessibility of tokenised assets.
However, a barrier to implementing tokenisation is identity verification, therefore, Fink noted that a new system needs to be developed.
“The takeaway is clear. If we’re serious about building an efficient and accessible financial system, championing tokenisation alone won’t suffice. We must solve digital verification, too,” said Fink.
“Financial transactions demand rigorous identity checks. Apple Pay and credit cards handle identity verification effortlessly, billions of times a day,
“But tokenised assets won’t run through those traditional channels, meaning we need a new digital identity verification system.”
Attitudes towards decentralised finance have transformed since 2017, when Fink deemed Bitcoin as “an index of money laundering.”
As of 2025, BlackRock manages the world’s largest spot Bitcoin exchange –traded fund – the iShares Bitcoin Trust.
