Brendan Greeley is selling shares in the equity he holds in his house. He offers a simple ledger entry—“One Share, Brendan’s House”—and invites anyone to buy or sell at will. This whimsical offer illustrates the ledger problem that underlies much of modern finance.
The ledger problem is essentially information asymmetry and counterparty risk. Buyers cannot know whether the seller has maintained the property, how many shares have been issued, or even if they hold legal title. In September the SEC announced a temporary exemption allowing companies to market tokenised stocks on a blockchain without being treated as an exchange, and rwa.xyz reports that $39bn of assets have already been tokenised on protocols like Ethereum and Solana. Just over a third are claims on U.S. Treasuries, but the list also includes commodities, hedge funds, private equity and real estate.
Tokenisation brings clear improvements: blockchains never close, trades settle instantly across borders, and illiquid assets can be made liquid. Yet more liquidity is not always better—existing constraints exist for good reason, and nothing about tokenisation fixes the underlying ledger problem. The assumption that new technology creates finance without precedent ignores the need to know what sits on a ledger and who stands behind it.
As Morgan Ricks, a Vanderbilt Law professor, puts it, “With tokenisation it’s just a different ledger. The underlying problems aren’t specific to any technology.” The solution remains the same: be sceptical, ask what is held, and force proof. Roula Khalaf, FT editor, reminds us that the human element—promising to produce a good asset—still matters.
Source: Financial Times Companies · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing