The TLDR 👇
In their Economist op-ed, BlackRock’s CEO and COO explain how tokenization records assets like real estate and bonds on digital ledgers for instant settlements and easier trading of smaller shares. They compare its current stage to the early internet, when Amazon had sold just $16 million in books, and predict rapid growth that bridges traditional finance with digital innovations. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says “tokenization today is roughly where the internet was in 1996.” BlackRock’s own tokenized fund, backed by U.S. Treasuries, has grown past $2.5 billion.
The world’s largest asset manager isn’t hedging, they’re declaring tokenization inevitable. When BlackRock says it’s 1996, they’re telling incumbents to adapt now or get left behind.
Paul Atkins, President Trump’s pick to lead the SEC, predicted that tokenization could become a core feature of American markets within just a few years, not a decade. “It’s the way the world will be… maybe not even in ten years, maybe even a lot less time, maybe a couple of years from now,” Atkins said in an interview with Fox. He emphasized tokenization will bring “huge benefits” like greater predictability and transparency, with onchain settlement reducing risk by narrowing or eliminating the gap between trade execution, payment, and final settlement. Atkins criticized the previous stance, noting the agency has been “standing athwart the marketplace” rather than embracing innovation, and pledged to position the United States “at the forefront” on crypto.
Vanguard , the world’s second-largest asset manager, will allow ETFs and mutual funds that primarily hold cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether and 2 others to be traded on its platform starting Tuesday. The move reverses a longstanding position that digital assets are too volatile and speculative for serious portfolios and comes despite a more than $1 trillion crypto market drawdown since early October.
When a $9 trillion AUM giant that once called crypto “too speculative” quietly flips the switch, that’s capitulation dressed as pragmatism. Client demand won.
Bank of America says its wealth management clients should start thinking about getting crypto exposure in their portfolios. The firm is endorsing a 1% to 4% allocation to digital assets for clients of its Merrill, Bank of America Private Bank, and Merrill Edge platforms. Its investment strategists will begin covering four Bitcoin ETFs in January.
BofA isn’t moonlighting in crypto, they’re setting allocation benchmarks.
WisdomTree’s fully staked ETH ETP is now live. The WisdomTree Physical Lido Staked Ether ETP (LIST) is the first European ETP to hold only stETH minted via the Lido protocol. LIST trades on Deutsche Börse Xetra, SIX Swiss Exchange and Euronext in Paris and Amsterdam. It holds stETH, providing exposure to staked ETH and corresponding onchain staking rewards through a listed product format. LIST begins trading with approximately $50 million in assets under management.
Ethereum activated its Fusaka upgrade on mainnet on Wednesday, bringing the network’s second major upgrade this year and introducing changes to data availability and block capacity. Fusaka reduces L2 data posting costs, which cuts rollup fees by 15 to 60%. Block gas limits rise from 30M to 150M (5x increase), and PeerDAS expands scalable data availability. Fusaka also lowers hardware and bandwidth requirements for nodes, enabling more full nodes and home validators.
Fusaka makes Ethereum cheaper and faster for the institutional flows already onchain: tokenized funds, stablecoins, DeFi settlement. More capacity +lower costs equals stronger rails for the next trillion in assets.
Charles Schwab plans to launch spot crypto trading in 2026. The firm, which oversees more than $12 trillion in client assets, intends to offer Bitcoin and Ethereum trading across its platforms after internal testing and a limited pilot phase.
$12 trillion doesn’t pilot speculative products. Schwab is building for scale. When brokerages this size commit to spot crypto infrastructure, the question isn’t “if” retail adoption happens, it’s how fast legacy players can build before they’re irrelevant.
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