The Executive’s Guide to Tokenization in 2026: A Curated Reading List

TL;DR

• The landscape is shifting: Tokenization is moving from strategic option to active consideration in 2026; a growing number of institutions are building production capabilities beyond innovation labs.
• Four reading layers: “Big Picture” sources (WEF, State Street) explain the value proposition; “Finternet” (BIS) reveals the institutional architecture central banks are building; “Crystal Ball” sources (Deloitte) outline 2026 implementation priorities; “Practitioner Lessons” draw on Fireblocks’ experience working with 80+ institutions to address operational execution realities.
• Core capability requirements: Success likely demands atomic settlement infrastructure, custody-as-control-plane thinking, and parallel processing systems that complement legacy cores.
• Strategic considerations: Pilot tokenized deposits and RWA infrastructure, engage regulators early, and clarify your ecosystem position as the market takes shape.

Why This Matters Now

If you’re a financial services executive, tokenization has likely moved from “interesting technology” to “strategic consideration” over the past year. Tokenization, or the process by which assets are converted into tokens that can be moved, stored, or recorded on a blockchain, enables a transparent, well-governed financial system.

The question facing many institutions isn’t whether tokenization will reshape aspects of financial markets, but rather how to think about where it fits in your institution’s future. The team at Fireblocks has already identified in several reports that as digital assets grow, traditional financial institutions will face pressure to meet evolving customer demands. Tokenization can serve as the foundation of those digital financial markets.

At Fireblocks, we spend our days working with institutions navigating this transition within tokenization and the platforms associated. We’ve watched the conversation evolve from theoretical white papers to pilot programs, from pilots to production systems, and from isolated experiments to strategic initiatives. What’s become clear is that executives benefit from a mental model for tokenization that’s grounded in reality, not hype; one that connects the dots between technological possibility, regulatory evolution, and actual business value.

This reading list emerged from a simple question: If you had limited time to understand where tokenization stands in 2026, what would you read? Not to become a blockchain engineer, but to develop the strategic literacy needed to make informed decisions about your institution’s future. The answer isn’t a single definitive source; it’s a constellation of perspectives that, taken together, paint a picture of an industry in transition.

How to Use This Guide

Think of this as a layered approach to building knowledge. We’ve organized the reading into four categories that map to different strategic questions:

• The Big Picture helps you understand the fundamental value proposition; why tokenization matters at all, what problems it solves, and what opportunities it creates across different asset classes.
• The Finternet (yes, that’s what they’re calling it) grounds you in the institutional architecture being built by central banks and standard-setting bodies; the plumbing that will ultimately determine how tokenized assets flow through the financial system.
• The Crystal Ball looks at near-term catalysts and practical implementation paths; the specific moves banks should be considering in 2026 and beyond.
• Practitioner Lessons draws on Fireblocks’ implementation experience from working with 80+ financial institutions globally, addressing the gap between strategic vision and day-to-day execution realities. These perspectives are inherently shaped by our vantage point; we include them because operational detail is often the missing layer in strategic reading lists, not because they’re the only practitioner voice worth hearing.

Let’s dive in.

The Big Picture: Understanding the Value Proposition

WEF & Accenture (May 2025): Asset Tokenization in Financial Markets¹

If you read one document to understand why major institutions are taking tokenization seriously, make it this one. The World Economic Forum and Accenture collaboration cuts through the noise to identify four core value drivers that actually matter to financial institutions:

• Transparency in the sense of immutable, auditable transaction histories that reduce reconciliation costs and settlement risk. This isn’t about making everything public; it’s about creating shared truth between counterparties without requiring trusted intermediaries for every interaction.
• Efficiency that compounds across the value chain. When assets exist in digital-native form, processes that once required multiple intermediaries, manual interventions, and days of settlement can happen programmatically in minutes. The report estimates cost reductions in post-trade processing in the range of 35-65%, depending on asset class.
• Accessibility through fractional ownership that lowers minimum investment thresholds and enables participation in asset classes previously reserved for institutional or ultra-high-net-worth investors. This matters especially for regional markets where illiquid assets like real estate and commodities dominate but lack efficient secondary markets.
• Enhanced liquidity by reducing friction in secondary markets and enabling 24/7 trading windows unconstrained by traditional market hours or settlement calendars.

The report maps these benefits across three key areas: issuance (where tokenization streamlines capital raising), securities financing (where atomic settlement enables more efficient collateral management), and asset management (where programmability enables new product structures).

The WEF/Accenture piece also doesn’t shy away from implementation challenges: legal frameworks that don’t yet recognize digital securities, custody models that blur the lines between traditional and digital asset operations, and interoperability standards still under development. But the overall assessment suggests these are solvable problems, not fundamental barriers.

State Street Global Advisors (September 2025): A Primer on Asset Tokenization²

Where the WEF report provides breadth, State Street brings depth on specific asset classes. This primer is particularly valuable for executives who need to translate abstract concepts into concrete business cases.

The treatment of fixed income tokenization walks through how a tokenized bond issuance differs from traditional processes, not just technologically but operationally and economically. The elimination of intermediaries in the settlement chain, the ability to encode coupon payment logic in smart contracts, and the potential for instant settlement all create measurable value. State Street estimates a 40-50% reduction in issuance costs for investment-grade corporate bonds, with the report suggesting even larger savings for more complex structures.

The real estate section addresses what may be one of the most promising near-term use cases for many markets. Tokenizing commercial real estate enables fractional ownership at scales previously difficult to achieve, could enable secondary-market liquidity for otherwise illiquid assets, and may reduce administrative overhead through automated distribution of rental income.

Private equity tokenization gets the most speculative treatment, as it should. The operational challenges are significant: how do you handle capital calls through smart contracts? What happens when valuations change between fundraising periods? How do you maintain regulatory compliance around qualified investor requirements? State Street doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but frames the questions in ways that help executives think through implementation pathways.

The real value of this primer is its practicality. It identifies near-term opportunities for banks: issuance platforms for tokenized securities, custody and administration services for digital assets, liquidity provision in secondary markets, and investment products that provide exposure to tokenized portfolios. These aren’t science fiction; they’re business lines that institutions could build with today’s technology, assuming they navigate the regulatory environment successfully.

Key Takeaway: The Big Picture sources establish tokenization’s fundamental value drivers (transparency, efficiency, accessibility, liquidity) and translate them into concrete opportunities across bonds, real estate, and private equity, with particular relevance for markets with structural illiquidity challenges.

The Finternet: Understanding Institutional Architecture

BIS (2025): The Unified Ledger Vision³

If the previous readings explain why tokenization matters, the Bank for International Settlements’ work on the “Finternet” and Unified Ledger concept explains what the endgame might look like, at least from the perspective of central banks and monetary authorities.

The BIS vision centers on what they call the Unified Ledger: an architecture where tokenized central bank reserves, commercial bank deposits, and various asset classes coexist on interoperable platforms. This isn’t about putting everything on a single blockchain; it’s about creating technical and regulatory standards that allow different ledger systems to interact seamlessly.

The critical insight here concerns what BIS calls the “singleness of money”; the principle that all forms of money should be exchangeable at par and settle with finality. This is why, in the BIS view, privately issued stablecoins may not serve as the ideal foundation for wholesale financial market infrastructure. They lack the unconditional convertibility and legal finality that central bank reserves provide. This challenge of achieving uniformity across different forms of tokenized money, and the technical approaches to address it through smart contract design, is something Fireblocks has explored in separate research on tokenized money architectures.

For commercial banks, this creates both opportunity and challenge. The opportunity: becoming the issuer of tokenized deposits that operate on these new rails, maintaining your role as a monetary intermediary in a tokenized world. The challenge: doing so requires significant technical and operational investment.

A tokenized deposit is simply an onchain representation of a traditional bank deposit. This means it can only be held by customers who have gone through the bank’s standard onboarding and KYC processes.

That said, the picture is likely more nuanced than the BIS framework alone suggests. While core wholesale cross-border interbank settlement could operate on tokenized central bank money, stablecoins may play a complementary role in non-CLS corridors, partnerships with virtual asset service providers (VASPs), and bridging traditional finance with crypto-native ecosystems. 

Banks will likely need infrastructure capable of handling both tokenized deposits and stablecoins, recognizing that different use cases and regulatory frameworks will determine which form of digital money is most appropriate for specific corridors and transaction types.

The BIS framework also addresses cross-border payments and settlement, arguably where current infrastructure is most strained. Tokenized reserves on interconnected platforms could enable near-instant cross-border settlement with full finality, reducing reliance on correspondent banking and lowering settlement risk.

What makes the BIS perspective particularly important is its institutional weight. This isn’t a think tank proposal; it’s guidance from the organization that coordinates central bank policy globally. When BIS articulates a vision for tokenized financial infrastructure, it offers a meaningful signal about where regulatory frameworks may evolve.

The document acknowledges significant implementation challenges: governance models for multi-party platforms, privacy protection in shared-ledger environments, operational resilience requirements, and legal frameworks for smart contract enforceability. But the direction of travel appears clear: major economies are moving toward tokenized central bank money as infrastructure, not as experiment.

Key Takeaway: The BIS framework reveals the institutional endgame for wholesale markets, with tokenized central bank reserves and regulated deposits forming the intended foundation for interbank settlement.

The Crystal Ball: Near-Term Strategy and Implementation

Deloitte Insights (December 2025): 2026 Banking and Capital Markets Outlook⁴

Deloitte’s annual outlook brings the conversation from vision to execution, asking: what should banks actually be doing in 2026?

The answer centers on two immediate priorities: piloting tokenized deposit products and building infrastructure for real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. These aren’t separate initiatives; they’re complementary capabilities that together could position banks to compete in an emerging ecosystem.

Tokenized deposits 

Tokenized deposits matter because programmable money enables new business models that traditional deposits cannot easily support. Consider corporate treasury products where cash automatically moves between operational accounts and yield-generating positions based on real-time liquidity needs, or supply chain finance where payment release is automatically triggered by delivery confirmation. These capabilities exist today in limited pilots; by 2027-2028, Deloitte expects them to become increasingly common in commercial banking.

The competitive dynamics appear to be shifting from multiple directions. Stablecoin issuers are capturing payment flows that once moved through correspondent banking networks. Fintech companies are building embedded finance experiences that bypass traditional banking interfaces. And increasingly, large enterprises are exploring direct issuance of tokenized commercial paper and short-term credit instruments that could reduce reliance on bank balance sheets.

Institutions that develop programmable deposit and payment capabilities may be better positioned to maintain their role in the value chain; those that don’t could find themselves providing underlying rails but capturing less data, relationship, or fee value from the transactions flowing through them.

RWA tokenization

RWA tokenization represents a meaningful growth opportunity. By building platforms that enable issuance, custody, and trading of tokenized securities, banks can pursue new revenue streams across the value chain. Deloitte estimates that early movers in RWA infrastructure could see 15-20% margin improvements on securities services revenue, while later entrants may face more competitive pricing as tokenized products mature.

The outlook also addresses regulatory developments with unusual specificity. In the US, the path toward comprehensive stablecoin regulation is becoming clearer, creating both constraints and opportunities. In the EU, MiCA implementation continues to create defined pathways for tokenized securities. And globally, several jurisdictions are developing sandbox frameworks specifically for tokenized financial instruments.

Practitioner Lessons: Operational Realities from Fireblocks

The sources above represent independent research from global institutions. What follows is different: these are perspectives drawn from Fireblocks’ own work implementing tokenized asset infrastructure with 80+ financial institutions. We include them because the gap between strategy and execution is where most tokenization initiatives stall, and that gap is difficult to see from the outside. Read them as one practitioner’s vantage point on operational challenges that cut across the institutions we work with.

Fireblocks (June 2025): Unlocking the Next Wave of Tokenized Assets⁵

The operational reality of tokenization comes down to three critical layers: asset-level infrastructure (representing legal ownership on-chain while maintaining digital asset compliance), custody and key management (policy enforcement integrated with risk systems), and value-chain design (sustainable platform economics).

The treatment of tokenized credit instruments addresses a practical question: can you implement a tokenized lending program that satisfies credit committees, regulators, and operational risk teams while delivering efficiency benefits? The assessment suggests yes, but it requires thinking through operational details like KYC for token holders, disclosure requirements, transfer restrictions, and data privacy on shared ledgers. Regional pilot examples in trade finance and receivables programs demonstrate practical pathways forward.

Key Takeaway from Unlocking the Next Wave of Tokenized Assets

The Crystal Ball sources make the case for near-term action on tokenized deposits and RWA infrastructure, framing 2026-2027 as a potentially important window as tokenized products begin competing alongside traditional offerings for client wallet share.

Atomic Settlement and Infrastructure Integration⁶

The atomic settlement argument is straightforward: when asset transfer and payment happen simultaneously, settlement risk can be substantially reduced or eliminated. No DVP structures requiring trusted intermediaries, no collateral calculations for settlement exposure, no reconciliation between trading systems and settlement systems. For a bank financing trade transactions with significant capital tied up to cover settlement risk, atomic settlement could free up that capital structurally.

The piece, The Next Chapter of Transaction Banking: Integrating Stablecoins & Tokenized Deposits, addresses 24/7 liquidity, enabling assets to move and transactions to settle any time, not just during traditional banking hours. For banks operating across multiple time zones, liquidity could be deployed when opportunities arise, not hours later when settlement windows open.

But the critical insight concerns integration reality: legacy core banking systems were designed for batch processing, end-of-day settlement, and account-based logic. They generally have no concept of atomic transactions, smart contract execution, or token-based assets. Integration isn’t simply a matter of APIs; it likely requires rethinking fundamental data models, transaction processing logic, and system-of-record architectures.

Custody as Transaction Control⁷

Custody in a tokenized world shifts from safekeeping to transaction-intent integrity. Traditional custody focuses on preventing unauthorized access. In tokenized environments, custody systems need to enforce complex policies: who can initiate different transaction types, what approvals are required, what risk limits apply, what compliance checks must pass before execution. This is custody as control plane, integrated deeply with risk management, compliance, and operations.

The analysis in the piece Digital Asset Custody as the Strategic Foundation for Banking’s Digital Future walks through custody architecture options: 

• fully self-custodied (where the bank controls all keys and infrastructure)
• co-managed (where key material is split between bank and custody provider)
• delegated (where a third party provides custody services)

Each model has different regulatory, operational, and risk implications. For banks considering tokenized asset programs, the custody strategy decision often becomes the first real forcing function, requiring specific choices about technology platforms, vendor relationships, operational models, and risk frameworks.

Tokenization underlies the fundamental questions around custody and makes them even more urgent. This piece covers how banks are thinking through custody architecture for tokenized assets.

The Capability Development Framework⁸

The four-stage capability framework within the piece Digital Asset Trading & Brokerage Services: How Banks are Building the Next Layer of Market Infrastructure, provides a roadmap for sequencing investments: 

• enabling access (custody integration and basic trading connectivity)
• market making (liquidity provision through active quoting)
• structured products (new product structures enabled by tokenization)
• programmable finance (becoming infrastructure that enables others to build financial products)

The framework helps institutions think about incremental capability building without needing to solve everything at once. It also addresses revenue model evolution candidly: tokenized trading may not support traditional bid-ask spreads as the transparency of on-chain activity compresses margins. But new revenue opportunities could emerge through protocol fee participation, staking and validation services, data monetization, and infrastructure-as-a-service offerings to clients building their own applications.

Key Takeaway from The Capability Development Framework

In our experience, legacy cores generally cannot simply “plug and play” with tokenized infrastructure; successful implementation tends to require building parallel processing capabilities that work alongside existing systems, with custody reimagined as transaction-control architecture rather than safekeeping.

What This Means for Your Institution

Strategic literacy without application is just trivia. Here’s what matters:

• First, assess market fit: Are you in a market where tokenization solves acute problems (cross-border friction, illiquid assets, custody costs)? This helps determine urgency and investment appetite.
• Second, look at people, process, and technology: Do you have the talent and organizational structure to operate in a tokenized world? This includes specialists in digital asset operations and risk managers who understand both traditional and tokenized finance. For processes, do your operational workflows accommodate programmable transactions and smart contract execution? On the technology front, can your stack support atomic settlement? Do you have custody infrastructure for digital assets? A future-proof foundation likely requires capabilities across all three dimensions, not just bolting technology onto existing structures.
• Third, run pilots that produce learning: Early value isn’t transaction volume; it’s discovering integration challenges and regulatory questions that only surface in production environments.
• Fourth, engage regulators proactively: In most jurisdictions, frameworks are still being written. Institutions that participate in sandboxes and demonstrate compliant implementations may help shape the rules.
• Fifth, clarify ecosystem position: Issuer of tokenized deposits? Platform provider for securities? Liquidity provider in digital markets? These require different capabilities and partnerships.

The Real Question

Many executives reading this will find the arguments compelling, appreciate the thoughtfulness of the research, and then return to organizations where tokenization remains one initiative among many, while core businesses continue serving clients with proven systems.

That’s a reasonable position for any individual institution. Legacy systems work well, generate reliable revenue, and changing them carries real costs and risks.

But consider what “wait and see” looks like in practice. Your competitors pilot tokenized deposit products and discover integration challenges you haven’t mapped. Regulators finalize frameworks shaped by institutions that showed up to sandbox consultations you skipped. Corporate clients begin asking for programmable treasury capabilities your stack can’t support. None of these are existential on their own. Collectively, they represent a widening gap between institutional knowledge and market reality.

This reading list won’t close that gap by itself, but it’s a place to start. These documents represent hundreds of person-years of research and implementation experience. Use them not as a case for action, but as a tool for pressure-testing your current assumptions about your market, your capabilities, and your timeline.

For executives evaluating tokenization timelines, the product decision and the infrastructure decision are effectively inseparable. See how Fireblocks supports tokenization at scale across custody, transfer, and settlement.

The path you take depends on where you’re starting from. The cost of starting from a position of ignorance is the one thing that’s not in question. Talk to an expert today to get started.

Interested in Tokenization with Fireblocks?

Fireblocks provides a comprehensive suite of solutions to support every stage of tokenization. At the core is the Fireblocks Tokenization Engine is designed to power the future of financial markets and digital asset ownership.

The views expressed in this piece are based on Fireblocks’ work with financial institutions globally implementing tokenized asset infrastructure. For institutions interested in exploring tokenization strategies specific to their market and regulatory context, Fireblocks offers technical, operational and business advisory services alongside our technology platform and regulated businesses.

References

[1]: World Economic Forum & Accenture (May 2025). “Asset Tokenization in Financial Markets: The Next Generation of Value Exchange.” Available at: http://reports.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Asset_Tokenization_in_Financial_Markets_2025.pdf

[2]: State Street Global Advisors (September 2025). “Asset tokenization in capital markets: A primer.” Available at: https://www.ssga.com/library-content/assets/pdf/global/digital-assets/2025/asset-tokenization-in-capital-markets.pdf

[3]: Bank for International Settlements (2025). “III. The next-generation monetary and financial system.” BIS Annual Economic Report. Available at: https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2025e3.htm

[4]: Deloitte Insights (December 2025). “2026 banking and capital markets outlook.” Available at: https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/financial-services/financial-services-industry-outlooks/banking-industry-outlook.html

[5]: Fireblocks (June 2025). “Unlocking the Next Wave of Tokenized Assets.” Available at: https://www.fireblocks.com/report/unlocking-the-next-wave-of-tokenized-assets

[6]: Way, Tim. “The Next Chapter of Transaction Banking: Integrating Stablecoins & Tokenized Deposits.” Fireblocks Insights. Available at: https://www.fireblocks.com/blog/next-chapter-transaction-banking

[7]: Hallahan, John. “Digital Asset Custody as the Strategic Foundation for Banking’s Digital Future.” Fireblocks Insights. Available at: https://www.fireblocks.com/blog/digital-asset-custody-strategy-banks[^8]: Way, Tim. “Digital Asset Trading & Brokerage Services: How Banks are Building the Next Layer of Market Infrastructure.” Fireblocks Insights. Available at: https://www.fireblocks.com/blog/digital-asset-trading-brokerage

[8]: Way, Tim. “Digital Asset Trading & Brokerage Services: How Banks are Building the Next Layer of Market Infrastructure.” Fireblocks Insights. Available at: https://www.fireblocks.com/blog/digital-asset-trading-brokerage