The New York Stock Exchange and its parent, Intercontinental Exchange, announced Monday a blockchain initiative to tokenize real-world assets and enable 24/7 trading with instant settlement. Omid Malekan criticized the plan on Tuesday, calling it “vaporware” and saying many implementation details remain unspecified (stated).
He said the announcement did not explain which chain would host the system, whether tokens would be permissioned, permissionless, or hybrid, or how tokenomics and fees would work. In an opinion piece, he argued the exchange’s centralized, oligopolistic structure runs counter to tokenization, writing “Tokenization represents a radically different architecture. It requires different skills and business models to be useful,” (wrote).
Malekan also compared the move to AT&T’s late 1990s attempt to dominate the early internet and said past dominance does not ensure future leadership.
Some industry figures welcomed the announcement. Carlos Domingo, founder and CEO of Securitize, called the plan bullish and praised native on-chain trading without wrappers (said), adding “On-chain trading of native tokenized equities coming from NYSE, no wrappers, no derivatives, no tokenized entitlements, bullish,”.
Alexander Spiegelman, head of research at Aptos Labs, supported using stronger infrastructure, saying “It’s about time we put the best tech to use,” (said). ARK Invest projected the real-world-asset tokenization market could grow from $22.2 billion to $11 trillion by 2023.
