Major financial institutions are forging ahead with tokenization, launching private blockchain payment rails even as a new survey highlights a curious split: broad strategic commitment to tokenization, but notable hesitation around equities. JPMorgan’s JPM Coin (now Kinexys Digital Payments) and Citibank’s Citi Token Services already allow institutional clients to transfer tokenized deposits in near-real time. Both platforms operate within regulated, permissioned environments, converting conventional account balances into onchain representations that settle instantly—without relying on public blockchains.
Against that backdrop, Broadridge Financial Solutions released its inaugural Tokenization Pulse Survey this week, drawing on responses from 200 senior decision-makers across wealth management, asset management, capital markets, and digital asset firms in the U.S. and Canada. The consensus is strong: 84% call tokenization strategically important, 92% expect digital and traditional assets to coexist long-term, and 68% believe tokenization will partially reshape financial markets within three to five years. Moreover, 69% plan to hybridize existing infrastructure rather than build separate systems, and nearly a third will boost tokenization investment by 26%–50% or more over the next two years.
Yet, within that optimism, equities stand out as an exception. Only about half of respondents expect tokenized equities to play a meaningful role within five years, compared to 80% who see tokenized mutual funds and money market funds gaining traction. The disparity makes sense: a tokenized money market fund is a simple, standard claim, while a tokenized share of a public company must cope with corporate actions, proxy votes, and dividend processing—a governance headache that firms like Broadridge still manage offchain.
This institutional caution contrasts starkly with onchain data. According to a16z crypto, monthly transfer volume for tokenized stocks hit $9.22 billion in June, up from just $53 million a year earlier—a 170-fold increase. That activity, encompassing trading, wallet transfers, and DeFi collateral deposits, largely flows through crypto-native platforms and synthetic wrappers, sidestepping the traditional transfer-agency system. So while Broadridge’s regulated pipework waits for hybrid infrastructure to mature, tokenized equity exposure is already exploding on decentralized rails.
The two trends—bank-led payment networks cementing their place and retail-driven onchain equity trading surging—may not clash so much as reveal parallel markets. Institutional conviction and grassroots demand are both real; whether they eventually converge remains the open question.
