BlackRock CEO And WEF Co-Chair Says The 'Financial System Is Rebooting,' Tokenization Is Needed To 'Build Modern Financial Infrastructure' And The 'Three Corners Of Digital Money'
“This is not just a story about a country catching up to the existing financial system. It’s a story about building modern financial infrastructure from the ground up,” says Larry Fink.
The following report is slated to appear in the latest edition of Revive The Table.
Our ‘friend’ Larry Fink is back again to remind us that the global financial system is changing and is transforming fast, and tokenization is at the center of it all. The CEO of BlackRock (which currently manages over $14 trillion in assets; which is roughly almost three times the GDP of Germany, the world’s third largest economy), and the co-chair of the World Economic Forum recently published1 his “2026 Annual Chairman’s Letter to Investors,” this year’s letter focuses on long-term investing, broader market participation and the transformative potential of tokenization; mechanisms that he claims will drive more financial inclusion and ownership for younger generations internationally that are struggling to get a foothold around the world.
We previously examined2 his 2025 letter, “The Democratization of Investing,” where Fink detailed what tokenization is, how it will fractionalize investment and ownership, and how digital ID needs to be embedded first before the true ‘benefits,’ he says, of tokenization can be felt. Tokenization was also a major talking point at this year’s annual WEF meetings in Davos this year, where Fink and many other guests discussed the so-called “new physics of money.”3
In his latest letter, Fink had this to say about tokenization (emphasis mine):
“Markets work when investors trust they can buy and sell at a fair price. That trust helps businesses raise the capital they need to grow, and it allows families to spread their investments across many assets at low cost instead of relying on just one. Expanding access to that system—through better technology and financial education—could help more people share in economic growth. Over time, the same technological advances could also help bring greater transparency and potentially broader access to parts of the private markets—areas like infrastructure and private credit that have traditionally been out of reach for most individual investors.
“Half the world’s population carries a digital wallet on their phone. Imagine if that same digital wallet could also let you invest in a broad mix of companies for the long term—as easily as sending a payment. Tokenization could help accelerate that future by updating the plumbing of the financial system—making investments easier to issue, easier to trade, and easier to access.”
“[…] [India] also offers a lesson for the next evolution in market infrastructure: tokenization—recording ownership on digital ledgers to reduce friction, lower costs, and speed settlement. India’s system is not built on blockchain-based infrastructure—in fact, it has largely taken a different path. But that’s precisely the point. Its success shows that new financial rails don’t depend on any single technology. They succeed when policy, technology, and adoption move together.
“The economies that built modern finance—the United States, the U.K., the EU—are now working to modernize long-established systems so traditional and digital markets can operate side by side. When you’ve built the world’s deepest capital markets, change can come more gradually. But the objective should be the same: making it easier for people to invest in the growth of their country.
“A smartphone wallet you can invest from is already remarkable. But the world of investable options grows much larger as financial assets themselves become digitally native. The bond you own is still a bond—but it can move more efficiently across modern infrastructure.
“Over time, that could allow a single, regulated digital wallet to hold not just payment balances, but a broad range of financial assets. In a single wallet, someone could hold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), digital euros, tokenized bonds, and fractional interests in assets that were once out of reach—from infrastructure to private credit funds. By lowering minimum investment amounts and making it easier to divide assets into smaller pieces, tokenization can open the door to more investors. It could also make it simpler for investors to receive information and cast shareholder votes. The goal isn’t novelty. It’s giving savers a simpler, more seamless way to participate in markets and build wealth.
“As Rob Goldstein and I wrote4 late last year, we believe that tokenization today may be roughly where the internet was in 1996. It won’t replace the existing financial system overnight. Instead, picture a bridge being built from both sides of a river, converging in the middle. On one side stand traditional institutions. On the other are digital-first innovators: stablecoin issuers, fintechs, public blockchains. The task for policymakers is to help build that bridge as quickly and safely as possible.
“Consistency will be important. Rather than writing an entirely new rulebook for digital markets, we should update the one we have so traditional and tokenized markets can work together. Tokenization also needs guardrails like clear buyer protections to ensure tokenized products are safe and transparent, strong counterparty-risk standards to prevent shocks from spreading, and digital-identity verification to manage the risks associated with illicit finance. This way, people can trade and invest with the same confidence they have when swiping a card or wiring money.
“This is not just a story about a country catching up to the existing financial system. It’s a story about building modern financial infrastructure from the ground up.”
Though Fink says India has not gone the full-blown tokenization route (yet), the Indian government has introduced its first official tokenization bill5 that specifies how tokens would be regulated, including stablecoins, along with an array of other asset classes including real estate, commodities, carbon credits and intellectual property. India also earlier this year introduced CBDC-based food coupons6 deposited directly into digital ID wallets via a new food rationing scheme.
Fink and others in the industry have given India high praise and have lauded the country, which reportedly is the second-most populated country in the world, as a model example of transformation. At the Davos summit in January, Fink argued7 that the tokenization of everything and placing those assets on a universal blockchain would end corruption.
“I think the movement towards tokenization, decimalization, is necessary.
“It’s ironic that we see two emerging countries leading the world in the tokenization and digitization of their currency. That’s Brazil and India. I think we need to move very rapidly to doing that.
“We would be reducing fees. We would do more democratization by reducing more fees if we had all investments on a tokenized platform that could move from a tokenized money market fund to equities and bonds and back and forth.
“We have one common blockchain. We could reduce corruption. So I would argue that, yes, we have more dependencies on maybe one blockchain, which we could all talk about. But that being said, activities are probably processed and more secure than ever before.”
Nevertheless, India’s digital ID scheme, the Aadhaar, is so effective in knowing who everyone is, there have been some comments made that perhaps the country does not need to tokenize everything because their ID system works so well that the government and RBI know what people are doing.
This was revealed during the International Monetary Fund (IMF)-World Bank week hosted by the Atlantic Council, in a segment called “How the tokenization of money will impact the international monetary system.”8
Siddharth Tiwari of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), known as the central bank of central banks, explained why digital ID is so imperative in the context of CBDCs, tokenization, stablecoins and cashless payments.
Tiwari had this to say (emphasis mine):
“So I think what happened in India was that the web was used to digitalize, not tokenize, digitalize the payment system. So it’s a pretty neat system. It’s open 24/7/365. It’s instant. It’s costless. It’s big-tech, fintech friendly, unlike China, where there’s a competition between Alipay, WeChat Pay and PBC.
“And it settles in fiat money inside the regulatory system. And it’s the first example of large-scale fintech companies, Google Pay, Apple Pay, WhatsApp Pay, settling inside the regulatory system. And they’re very happy with it. They’re extremely happy with it.
“[…] So it’s not so much a developing country issue or advanced economy issue. It is an issue of whether you have history of financial transactions. Can you post collateral?
“And those problems are the same in India over a 10-year period. The gaps between men and women, educated, uneducated, urban, rural, employed, unemployed, the access to the financial system decreased to single digits, the largest decrease in the history of maybe the last 100 years. And that’s massive.
“So today you have, I might, you know, I could just take out my phone, it’s interoperable, I could transfer you something and you’d get it in under one second. Singapore has the same thing. I think the governor here said that they’re not looking to tokenize at the retail level because retail investors are not going to go between tokenized deposits and what they have.”
Hung Tran of the Atlantic Council followed up Tiwari’s remarks emphasizing the digital ID is tantamount to making this system work, especially considering if an economy is going to tokenize on the retail level. Tran added:
“My understanding is that one key prerequisite for this UPI system to work in India is the digital identity that has been implemented as public goods for India, requiring two-factor authentication. So with that done, everyone [now has some sort of] digital ID.
“Banks feel comfortable in getting into this kind of transaction because they know that this is indeed my customer and that is indeed the payee that this customer wants to send money to. So without that digital ID system, it’s not easy to imagine this kind of thing work. And that digital ID is something that probably not easy to translate to other countries because different culture, different social perception, people might not like that. So it has more requirements.”
Tran later went on to say that identities, we ourselves, will be tokenized in 15 years.
“The BIS is looking at something called a unified ledger, which is going back to the beginning of this conversation that if you have 10 percent and 90 percent, why not tokenize the whole thing? So tokenize public money, CBDC, tokenize bank deposits, tokenize the equity market to serve as collateral that you can get credit with. And so as you go down the line, once it gets tokenized, it’ll be super efficient.
“And you’ll — look, I have no doubt you and I will get tokenized in 15 years.”
Western governments are in the process of quietly retrofitting their economies to adopt a tokenized model and enforce digital IDs.
The United Kingdom recently announced9 it will completely embrace a tokenized economy; and Philip Belamant, Co-Founder and CEO of Zilch, a digital payments and shopping app, said on the back of the announcement: “AI will fundamentally change how people interact with money, shifting payments from something consumers actively manage to something that is intelligently managed and optimised in the background. As this becomes a reality, it’s critical that regulation evolves to support innovation while maintaining strong consumer protections.”
Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent revealed10 in April that President Trump plans to sign an executive order that would force banks to require customers to provide biometric data and passports to open and maintain a bank account, under the guise of tackling illegal immigration. This plan harkens back to parameters spelled out in the Genius Act Trump signed last year, and a White House report titled “Strengthening American Leadership in Digital Finance Technology;” whose authors say the White House “endorse[s] the notion that digital assets and blockchain technologies can revolutionize not just America’s financial system, but systems of ownership and governance economy-wide” — which we covered in the first issue of RTT.11
All of this is part of a greater, concerted effort around the world to reshape and rewire global finance. In April, Matthew Blake, Managing Director at the WEF, wrote, “The financial system is rebooting. Stakeholders must adapt.”12
“Yesterday’s north star of global financial harmony has yielded to today’s realpolitik. But regional cooperation doesn’t need to splinter the world entirely. By insisting that governments hardwire interoperability into the architecture of financial systems, corporate leaders can shape regional integration into a steppingstone toward renewed global connectivity, rather than allowing it to calcify into a permanent dead end.
“Those that adapt their operating models, policy frameworks, and risk assumptions to this new reality will help shape a system that is fit for a multipolar world. Those that cling to outdated assumptions risk being overtaken.”
The key word is “interoperability.” Countries are all going to do different things: some will go all-in on wholesale and retail CBDCs, others will really emphasize stablecoins, while others will adopt hybrid systems somewhere in-between that do not fully eliminate cash, but make sure the tokenized, blockchain and point-of-sale rails are in place to ensure transactions are tracked; but all of these different systems will be able to work harmoniously together.
As explained by Fireblocks, touted as the world’s most trusted digital asset and stablecoin infrastructure company, have referred13 to what they call the “Three Corners of a Money Triangle;” comprising CBDCs, stablecoins, and tokenized assets.
The key to all of this is interoperability, writing:
“The key is ensuring what is known as the singleness of money — their full interchangeability at par value — to ensure frictionless, trusted interactions, just as we expect today.
“Ultimately, we need to stop thinking about these three forms of money as competitors. As the system matures, it’s clear they will co-exist as three corners of a new digital money triangle, just as different forms of money do today.
“Interoperability will help to unlock the power of programmability and composability on blockchains. This will allow us, for example, to program a tokenized deposit to move funds instantly to the merchant at the moment goods are delivered, while allowing the delivery driver to simultaneously receive their fee in a stablecoin of their choosing, and programmatically pay what is owed to the tax office in the form of a CBDC in real-time, all while eliminating the need for manual reconciliation.”
As the years have gone by, and in response to public backlash to CBDCs, it appears that central banks and private fintechs and corporations are seeking to implement an even more controlling and oppressive system than previously first pitched; one that appears to be more transparent and equitable, free and fair, but is in reality an even more sophisticated leviathan system that we don’t want. Never forget that these are the same people who smile at you and say, “You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
Proverbs 28:11 The rich man is wise in his own conceit; but the poor that hath understanding searcheth him out.
While the masses are distracted elsewhere, the new plumbing for our digital enslavement is being installed. 2026 is shaping up to be a very pivotal year for tokenization and digital ID…
Proverbs 22:7 The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
For more on the latest research concerning tokenization, digital IDs, the control grid rollout and pre-crime surveillance state rapidly being built around the world, please consider following my work on Substack for more in-depth reports such as this.
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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-annual-chairmans-letter
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/tokenization-blackrocks-larry-fink
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/tokenization-takes-center-stage-at
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/tokenization-how-tokenizing-all-assets
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/first-tokenization-bill-tabled-in-india-but-legislation-not-proposed-by-government/
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/india-introduces-monthly-cbdc-based
Ibid.
https://www.youtube.com/live/ZZX4sTQN9GQ
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/united-kingdom-affirms-plans-to-fully
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/digital-id-treasury-secretary-scott
https://thewinepress.substack.com/p/tokenization-trump-administration
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/04/the-financial-system-is-rebooting-stakeholders-must-adapt/
https://www.fireblocks.com/blog/stablecoins-tokenized-deposits-cbdcs
Yes, Larry, because starving children in sub-Saharan regions of the world would just sing with glee if only they had easier access to stock trading. Who does this guy think he’s kidding?
I read this kind of material very slowly trying my best to absorb. The whole concept I "get" is that finance has to take place at the speed of lightening. Yet, no one has explained why life has to be driven by a speed most people simply don't need. OTOH, no one explains--since the system is totally digital--how any powerful group with enough AI can't infiltrate and control the system. In fact esc key has shown how the anonymous algorithms, protections, and restrictions actually construct the system and operate in the background with no one for redress or adjustment if the "consumer" has a problem. The "problem" would invariably reflect a disagreement on level of privacy or control, but since the whole system is handled behind closed curtains, the "consumer" is faced with a vast monolith which has no avenue for adjustment or amelioration. You either "go along" or don't and are essentially eliminated by the system.
We clearly see what's happening. The whole ruse of the Hormuz Strait War to create famine and dislocation of populations for the next 5-15 years fits in beautifully with their projected dates for successfully transferring everyone over to a digital system with tokenization. The tokenization offers absolutely nothing more for the current customer/consumer except their "assets" are keep physically from them on a thing called a "blockchain" which they must accept someone else's word is secure and unhackable.
I wonder...if the deed to a home is tokenized, despite all their protestations about security and protection...given the number of dishonest people in the world...why couldn't someone simply assume the deed in their name? Anything and everything can be hacked. All your assets could be stolen and the individual left with nothing because the system would say that all protection was given and no system could be breeched. It's like a f**king nightmare. A real Catch-22.