Tokenised real-world assets exceeded USD 30 billion in value by Q3 2025, with projections reaching USD 30.1 trillion by 2034, according to a joint report by Standard Chartered Bank and Synpulse. This signals a transition from pilot initiatives to operational relevance at scale. 

Tokenisation has become a prominent and recurring topic across discussions with national stock exchanges, derivatives venues, and new market entrants, regardless of whether tokenised products are planned for immediate launch. 

The executive conversation has shifted decisively from whether tokenisation will matter to when it must be supported and how to prepare without compromising existing market models or regulatory obligations.

What tokenisation means in today’s market landscape

Tokenisation refers to the representation of financial assets on distributed ledger infrastructure, enabling programmable ownership, transfer, and settlement across digital environments. In practice, adoption has focused on assets with clear operational utility, particularly bonds and money market funds, due to their role in collateral management and settlement.

The current landscape remains fragmented. According to Broadridge, many initiatives create isolated digital islands that restrict liquidity and reuse rather than enhancing them at scale. Yet both legacy and emerging institutions increasingly recognise that distributed ledger assets will become integral to future market structure.

Why tokenisation challenges existing exchange infrastructure

While widely accepted as inevitable, tokenisation exposes structural, operational, and technical tensions within today’s exchange platforms. These pressures explain why this topic has moved from a product discussion to a board-level architecture question.

Strategic imperatives around future readiness

Tokenisation represents an inevitable evolution in market design. Exchanges launching new venues, asset classes, or derivatives increasingly seek assurance that their platforms can accommodate digital assets without requiring wholesale replacement.

This creates tension between maintaining stable, regulated operations today and preparing for tokenised markets whose precise form continues to evolve. Executives face difficult decisions about technology investments when the ultimate requirements cannot be fully specified in advance.

Operational and market-structure limitations

Traditional trading venues rely on static collateral, sequential post-trade processes, and dependency on banking cut-off times, limiting liquidity efficiency and balance-sheet optimisation. Yet intraday liquidity is now prioritised over overnight liquidity, with 51% of industry respondents identifying it as the most practical impact of tokenisation. This highlights a fundamental mismatch between market needs and legacy processes.

Moreover, IOSCO has highlighted that fragmented ledger implementations risk recreating inefficiencies at scale, trapping assets on competing networks and undermining the capital mobility that tokenisation promises. Without interoperability, the industry faces bifurcation where assets become stranded on incompatible chains.

Technical and adoption frictions

Supporting tokenised markets introduces new technical requirements: fractionalisation in both price and quantity, high decimal precision, and support for negative values in pricing and positions. Integration with blockchain and distributed ledger systems raises questions around custody and settlement transparency, particularly in regulated environments where fair and orderly trading must be preserved.

Atomic or instantaneous settlement offers transparency and reduced counterparty risk, yet as IOSCO has opined, pre-funding requirements and liquidity inefficiencies present material barriers to institutional adoption. While regulators view its characteristics favourably, the operational reality of committing capital before trades are executed remains a significant constraint for market participants managing substantial positions.

How digital-native technology addresses these challenges

The role of technology is not to necessarily force immediate adoption. Rather, it provides platforms that accommodate gradual, pragmatic integration while addressing the operational limitations exchanges face today. 

Infrastructure designed for future readiness

Cloud-native, modular architectures support both traditional and tokenised instruments on a single platform. This approach directly addresses executive concerns around future-proofing, ensuring that new asset classes and market models can be introduced without re-architecting core systems. Exchanges gain the flexibility to respond to market evolution without being locked into rigid technology choices. By design, such systems recognise that digital assets will become integral to future market structure, even if they are not a day-one requirement.

Practical support for tokenised trading mechanics

Digital-native trading systems natively support fractionalisation, decimal precision, and complex pricing structures required for hybrid markets. Public APIs and integration-first design simplify connectivity with blockchain networks, custodians, and settlement layers, reducing technical friction and time to market.

Flexible, programmable settlement models acknowledge that full atomic settlement may not suit all asset classes. Platforms can balance transparency with capital efficiency and regulatory requirements, allowing exchanges to adopt settlement approaches that match their specific market conditions.

Positioning for tomorrow’s markets

Tokenisation has become a structural consideration for exchanges seeking to remain competitive and operationally resilient. The window for preparation is narrowing. Exchanges must address fragmentation, liquidity risk, and regulatory uncertainty while preparing systems for tokenised instruments. 

As the industry moves beyond the question of inevitability, digital-native platforms emerge as the foundation for supporting distributed ledger assets alongside traditional operations, positioning venues for tomorrow without compromising today.

Explore how digital-native market infrastructure can support tokenised assets, modern collateral models, and future-ready exchange operations without disrupting existing markets:  https://www.exberry.io/who-we-serve-digitized-alternative-markets/