Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has urged governments and companies to pursue broad tokenization as a tool for raising capital and attracting foreign direct investment, arguing that selling tokenized shares to global investors should be a priority. In an X post on Aug. 21, Zhao wrote, “Let’s tokenize everything,” and said tokenization is one of the best ways for countries to raise money or attract FDI.
Zhao specifically backed issuing tokenized assets across every blockchain, rather than choosing a single network. He acknowledged this would fragment market liquidity, but said parallel development across multiple ecosystems would be the fastest way to expand the sector. He argued that high interchangeability between issuers could reduce some of the damage from fragmented liquidity, though that would require consistent redemption rights, backing arrangements, settlement processes and legal claims.
The comments were accompanied by growth figures from BNB Chain. The network reported about 776,000 holders of tokenized real-world assets, while RWA.xyz recorded 776,428 addresses as of Aug. 19, up 368.51% over the previous 30 days. The platform tracked $5.8 billion in distributed asset value across 1,284 assets. BNB Chain also secured 61.7% of assets on Franklin Templeton’s Benji platform, about $1.5 billion at the time.
Zhao’s position is not a formal investment initiative from Binance, BNB Chain or any government. He did not name countries preparing tokenized share offerings or provide a timeline. Tokenized shares remain securities and must comply with relevant issuance and secondary trading rules. Under the OECD definition, FDI generally requires a lasting interest and at least 10% voting power, so smaller tokenized share purchases may be classified as portfolio investment.
The broader tokenization market has been expanding. BlockchainReporter’s roundup tracked on-chain real-world assets crossing $20 billion, while projects such as Ondo have built infrastructure to move tokenized stocks between supported blockchain markets and Hyperliquid has hosted tokenized U.S. stocks in its trading environment. Still, custody, legal settlement, securities classification, issuer accountability and beneficial ownership identification remain unresolved challenges across ecosystems including Ethereum, Polygon and BNB Chain.
