[Recap] How Tokenization is Reshaping Capital Markets

The Tie recently hosted a webinar exploring how tokenization is reshaping capital markets, moderated by Sacha Ghebali, Chief Strategy Officer at The Tie. The discussion featured John Kikko from the Hedera Foundation, Michael Heinrich from Zero Gravity Labs, and Olivia Vande Woude from Ava Labs examining how tokenized securities are creating seamless capital flows between traditional finance and blockchain technology.

Watch the full Webinar here:

Despite significant momentum, tokenization remains in its infancy. Michael Heinrich noted Oliver Wyman's projection of $800 trillion in assets eventually being tokenized, with $6 trillion expected by 2030. Currently, only $2 billion of real-world assets are on-chain, with tokenized money market funds seeing the most adoption.

Olivia Vande Woude framed the current phase as Gartner's "slope of enlightenment", characterized by measurable ROI and mature technology. With trillions in monthly tokenized repo volumes and $26 billion in live RWA market cap, it seems that real institutional deployment is underway.

Tokenization addresses critical market inefficiencies. John emphasized collateral mobility, enabling repo transactions in minutes rather than days. Michael highlighted democratization—retail investors can now access market-neutral hedge funds and basis trades previously reserved for institutions. Olivia compares traditional markets to paper maps (slow, gated) and tokenization to GPS (dynamic, real-time, borderless).

Regulatory clarity through the Genius Act and rising interest rates have catalyzed adoption. Policy developments from 401(k) cryptocurrency allocations to OCC interpretive letters continue inviting participation. BlackRock's BUIDL fund surpassing $2.2 billion AUM and gaining acceptance as margin collateral proves institutional-grade products can achieve scale.

Hedera has deployed over $200 million in live stablecoins including Fidelity's USD money market fund token. Its 32 governing council members—including Aberdeen, Standard Bank, and Nomura—are transitioning from operating nodes to deploying capital on-chain.

Aberdeen's use of tokenized funds as collateral for leveraged FX trades with Lloyd's demonstrates trillion-dollar market potential. Hedera's Central Bank of Australia CBDC pilot and Tokeny partnership on ERC-3643 compliance standards position it at the forefront of institutional adoption.

Avalanche hosts 80 enterprise blockchains through Evergreen, including FIFA's dedicated L1. Its $50 million Vista initiative attracted BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, and WisdomTree partnerships.

In payments, Axion's integration with providers processing $25 billion annually enables real-time settlement. Grove Finance's $250 million deployment into on-chain credit through Centrifuge showcases T+0 settlement and programmable capital distributions. Dinari's launch as a FINRA-registered broker-dealer offering tokenized US equities marks another milestone.

Zero Gravity raised $350 million to build the "fastest AI Layer 1," addressing the million-times gap between AI requirements and blockchain capabilities through parallelized execution and 50GB/s data throughput.

This enables transparent AI applications that compress 30-day distressed debt settlements to hours. With 300 projects building ahead of Q3 2025 mainnet launch, Zero Gravity pioneers AI agents as tradeable financial assets.

John expects significant complexity abstraction within 2-3 years, with crypto-native and traditional exchanges competing directly. Olivia projects 15% of US equity trades settling on tokenized rails by 2027-2028. Michael anticipates global neo-banks on blockchain and major institutions trading on DEXes within 12-18 months.

Tokenization has crossed from proof-of-concepts to production-ready infrastructure. As regulatory frameworks solidify and institutions move from pilots to deployment, the convergence accelerates. Through Hedera's enterprise partnerships, Avalanche's institutional rails, and Zero Gravity's AI vision, tokenization is building new foundations for global finance.