Tokenisation of capital markets is no longer a pilot program, it is the foundational infrastructure for a new era of global finance, according to panellists at the “Digital Assets Graduation to the Institutional Mainstream” panel at Abu Dhabi Finance Week (ADFW).
The conversation moved past simple adoption, focusing instead on the complete overhaul of the financial ecosystem.
For years, the industry spent “hundreds of millions proving… that it’s actually valuable enough to begin to rip up the streets,” according to David Rutter, founder and CEO of R3. That economic proof is now established, leading R3 to pivot from private ledgers toward public, permissioned ones like Solana.
Rutter argued this shift is inevitable, driven by capital flows: “We used to try to push them on. What we’re focusing on [now] is the pull. Wall street follows capital… That capital will pull real world assets on chain.”
R3 is now developing tooling to help traditional financial customers migrate their real-world assets onto high-performance public chains.
This transformation is being validated by the restructuring of investment capital itself, the panel said.
Lucy Gazmararian, Founder of Token Bay Capital, pointed to the emergence of a new financial order. She asserted that Abu Dhabi is now a new global financial centre because “it’s blockchain and crypto and tokens that are enabling new centres of gravity for global financial markets. And they’re now the nexus of new capital flows that’s based on chain”.
Additionally, the supporting regulatory frameworks are flexible enough to allow for innovative venture capital strategies, including investment “in both tokens and equity,” showing that institutional capital is already flowing directly into the tokenised economy.
The most profound change is the opportunity to build a modern financial system from scratch, avoiding decades of accumulated technological debt.
Marco Santori, CEO of Solmate, crystallised this view: “Can we beat Wall Street? No, but we could rebuild it. We can overthrow them. We can do it from scratch here… a brand-new Wall Street that’s faster, cheaper, fairer, more transparent.”
Rutter highlighted the systemic advantage this offers for relatively immature economies, comparing it to technological adoption in emerging markets.
“I often say that many Africans had cell phones before Europeans and Americans because there’s no landlines. Capital markets are very underdeveloped here,” he said. “But because of that… they have an opportunity to skip a generation and to really embrace digital capital markets.”
The clearest proof of capital markets already being tokenised lies in the most immediate institutional opportunity: stablecoin investment funds, which Rutter identified as the “sweet spot” seeking yields superior to traditional Treasuries.
Tokenisation, the panel concluded, is the current infrastructure choice for a superior financial future.
The Capital Pioneer editorial team is on the ground in Abu Dhabi — please get in touch if you would like to meet during the events.
