Why BlackRock CEO touts $20tn tokenisation market as antidote to low investor participation, AI threats

A year after touting the advantages of trading tokenised versions of stocks and bonds, BlackRock’s CEO is back boosting the technology.

In his annual 2026 shareholders’ letter, Larry Fink praised tokenisation — the process of turning traditional financial assets into tokens on a blockchain — for its ability to lower barriers to investing.

And with nearly half of Americans not invested in public markets, the BlackRock chief suggests the technology could be key in getting even more people to invest.

“Half the world’s population carries a digital wallet on their phone,” Fink wrote on Tuesday. “Imagine if that same digital wallet could also let you invest in a broad mix of companies for the long term — as easily as sending a payment.”

This access is critical, he suggests, as wealth continues to accumulate among those who own stocks and those who don’t.

This pattern will only intensify as artificial intelligence advances.

“AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale — concentrating wealth among the companies and investors positioned to capture it,” Fink wrote.

This isn’t the first time the BlackRock chief has lauded tokenisation.

Fink’s shareholders’ letter in 2025 was equally bullish, and the firm predicted a massive increase in the tokenisation market.

Geopolitical chaos and the rise of artificial intelligence add, however, a much different context than last year’s note.

$20 trillion

BlackRock forecasts the tokenisation market to reach $20 trillion by 2030, roughly 754 times its current size.

That figure includes equities, exchange-traded funds, indices, commodities, and just about any other traditional financial asset you can think of.

Analysts say that tokenisation an increase transactions speeds and lowers overhead costs by moving finance onto blockchain technology.

Grayscale, a digital asset management firm, suggested the market will hit $35 trillion by the end of the decade.

Already, big brands such as Robinhood are making clear inroads on this front.

In 2025, centralised players like Robinhood, Kraken and Superstate launched tokenised stocks on their platforms, enabling 24/7 trading of digital exposure to company shares.

“We’re moving from pilots to infrastructure,” Jim Hiltner, co-founder of Superstate, told DL News in December. “Tokenised assets will start to look less like a niche category and more like a new operating layer for capital markets.”

Regulatory hurdles

To be sure, much of this growth is contingent on key regulatory changes.

“Tokenisation also needs guardrails like clear buyer protections to ensure tokenised products are safe and transparent, strong counterparty-risk standards to prevent shocks from spreading, and digital-identity verification to manage the risks associated with illicit finance,” Fink said in his letter.

Meanwhile, the Clarity Act, a crucial bill that would allow for technologies such as tokenisation to advance, has been stalled for much of the year.

On Sunday, however, US senators said they had agreed to strike an “agreement in principle” with the White House over key language in a bill regarding stablecoins.

The act’s passage would make clear to larger institutional players that tokenised assets would fall under many existing rules and regulations.

That includes opening larger marketplaces like the Nasdaq and NYSE to trading these types of assets, too.

“Once we have a clear regulatory framework for crypto in place, I think we will see faster adoption and innovation across the industry,” Johann Kerbrat, SVP and GM of Robinhood Crypto, told DL News.

Crypto market movers

• Bitcoin is up 3% over the past 24 hours, trading at $70,454.
• Ethereum rose 3.3% in the last day to $2,133.

What we’re reading

• Crypto owners should be allowed to carry guns, says Ledger co-founder — DL News
• Why the $19bn October crypto wipeout was ‘one of the best things’ to happen to onchain options startups — DL News
• Senate push targets sports betting on prediction markets — Unchained
• Did Iran just call Trump‘s bluff? — Milk Road

Liam Kelly is DL News’ Berlin-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Get in touch at [e-mail].