Global lender says blockchain finance could streamline markets but add systemic risks

The International Monetary Fund said tokenized finance could make markets more efficient by moving financial assets and liabilities onto shared digital ledgers, where execution, clearing and settlement can be compressed into software-driven synchronous processes, but warned that policy choices will determine whether the shift strengthens integration or deepens fragmentation. Tobias Adrian, the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department director, said the emerging tokenized economy is coalescing around three types of settlement assets: tokenized bank deposits, stablecoins and tokenized central bank reserves. He also said tokenization is not just about faster payments or programmable assets, because it can relocate risk away from traditional intermediary balance sheets toward platforms, code and infrastructure providers. The IMF has also warned that broader adoption depends on legal certainty over ownership, settlement finality and jurisdiction, and that without common standards and coordinated regulation, incompatible platforms could fragment liquidity and create new systemic risks. Citing BeInCrypto’s Real State of Tokenization in 2026 report, the earlier account said the tokenized real-world asset market was roughly $60 billion as of May 31, excluding stablecoins and repurchase agreements, with about 97% either inaccessible to US retail investors or lacking retail-grade regulation.