Tokenization Is Likely to Transform Infrastructure and Financial Markets: Bank of America

Tokenization is just one application of blockchain technology, but it’s the one that could transform financial and non-financial infrastructure and financial markets over the next five to 15 years, Bank of America (BAC) said in a research report Thursday.

“We are on the verge of an infrastructure evolution that may reshape how value is transferred, settled and stored across every industry,” analysts Alkesh Shah and Andrew Moss wrote.

Tokenization is the process by which real-world assets are converted into blockchain-based tokens.

“The tokenization of traditional assets and issuance of assets in tokenized form have the potential to increase efficiencies and reduce costs across an asset's life cycle, improve the efficient allocation of capital, optimize global supply chains, catalyze a new generation of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies and ultimately drive mainstream adoption,” the analysts wrote.

Bank of America notes that disruptive technology like radio, television and email took thirty years to reach mainstream adoption. It expects a much shorter lag for digital assets.

The bank said the implementation of blockchain technology will accelerate among financial institutions and corporates as the “opportunity cost of uncaptured efficiencies increases.”

“Distributed ledger technology and tokenized traditional assets aren’t ‘crypto,’” the report said, adding that “blockchains record ownership of the 26k+ tokens that exist within the digital asset ecosystem, but we expect 99% of those in existence today to essentially disappear over the next ten years.”

Memecoins like shiba inu (SHIB) and pepecoin (PEPE) receive a huge amount of attention “despite having no utility or intrinsic value, but other tokens are different”, the note said.

Public permissionless blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum and some third-generation blockchains are decentralized and require tokens to reward participants for processing transactions on the network, the report noted.

Read more: Crypto Market Regulatory Uncertainty Overshadows Blockchain Development: Bank of America