Aussie Chainlink Exec Says Banks Are Preparing for Tokenisation

A real world asset (RWA) tokenisation revolution is about to begin as major banks around the world prepare to launch mainnet use cases to support the tokenisation of trillions of dollars worth of assets, according to Australian Chainlink Labs executive, Niki Ariyasinghe.

RWA tokenisation involves tokenising assets, such as bonds or real estate, on a distributed ledger (such as a blockchain), which provides numerous benefits including increased liquidity, faster settlement times and improved transparency.

Shift From Testing To Deployment Coming This Year

Speaking at the recent Australian Crypto Convention, Ariyasinghe—who is the Head of Business Development in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East at Chainlink Labs—said 2024 will be the year that major banks shift from testing their tokenisation platforms and start to move them into production. 

He said this shift would include many of the world’s largest and most recognisable banks:

The difference now is that we’re shifting to production deployments — particularly banks are taking a leading role in deploying their own platforms. Some that are relatively well known globally — Goldman Sachs, Broadridge, which is a technical provider — and many, many others, including Citi and HSBC, have all made announcements around their own particular tokenisation platforms. They believe that this opportunity is coming.

Niki Ariyasinghe, Head of Business Development Asia-Pacific and Middle East

Tokenisation Builds, 2026 True Point Of Take-Off

Ariyasinghe believes large scale deployment of tokenisation platforms this year was just the first step in creating a strong foundation for widespread adoption:

23-24 is really about putting in that base level foundation. What we see happening in 24-25 is catalyst transactions, not just one off transactions, but verticals — particular types of transactions — starting to move real volume onto these particular platforms, so not just one off transactions by any means.

Niki Ariyasinghe, Head of Business Development Asia-Pacific and Middle East

As an example of what widespread adoption of these tokenisation platforms could look like, Ariyasinghe cited Broadridge and their blockchain-based repo platform which currently handles $70 billion of transactions per day. 

He claims that by 2025-26 we could see this scale of use case replicated across numerous verticals within the banking sector, with 2026 pinpointed as the year he expects to see RWA really start to take off:

Once you have those catalysts in place, then we believe 2026 onwards is the point of acceleration.

Niki Ariyasinghe, Head of Business Development Asia-Pacific and Middle East