Fink spoke during an appearance at a New York Times DealBook event.
The CEO also discussed the potential of blockchain technology.
Tokenization of assets is “the next generation for markets,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has remarked. Tokenization is a term used in the blockchain industry to describe the process of creating a digital token on the blockchain that represents an asset and verifies its ownership and transaction history.
With this method, transactions involving stocks, bonds, real estate, and even any other form of assets may be recorded in a public ledger. Fink, during an appearance at a New York Times DealBook event, defended tokenization as a means to “instantaneous settlement” and lower expenses.
Wave of the Future
In spite of these benefits, he said, the introduction of such technology wouldn’t pose a threat to BlackRock’s current way of doing business.
The CEO discussed the potential of blockchain technology but also numerous pressing economic challenges such as the fallout from the war between Russia and Ukraine, China’s evolving position in the global economy, and the inflationary pressure that has hit most developed countries this year.
Tokenization may be the wave of the future for the financial services industry, but it is backed by more than just BlackRock. Recently, notable investors including a16z, General Catalyst, and Samsung Venture Investment invested $70 million in Flowcarbon, a startup helmed by former WeWork founder Adam Neumann and tokenizing carbon credits.
In a pilot conducted in Singapore in November, JPMorgan relied on Polygon to facilitate the trading of tokenized cash deposits on the bank’s own private blockchain, Onyx Digital Assets. The bank has also lauded tokenization in certain whitepapers, claiming that it may make it possible to provide financial services in a more open way.