[Editorial] 'Tokenization of Everything'... Whose Innovation Is It?

Blockchain started from the ideal of 'decentralization.' It promised that individuals could directly control their assets on a ledger where values could be exchanged without central intermediaries like banks or states, and where no one could arbitrarily alter the records.

However, blockchain is now at the center of another massive transformation: tokenization.

Tokenization is the technology that allows assets or rights to be represented and transferred on a digital ledger. It can express not only stocks and bonds but also assets like real estate, funds, and infrastructure as tokens. The advantages include automating transactions and payments, dividing assets that were previously difficult to trade into smaller units, and increasing market accessibility.

This is why Larry Fink, CEO of the world’s largest asset management firm BlackRock, emphasizes tokenization as a core infrastructure for future financial markets. BlackRock describes tokenization as recording ownership of assets on a digital ledger, highlighting its potential to lower transaction costs and enhance payment speed and market accessibility for various assets, including real estate and corporate bonds.

Up to this point, it is a financial innovation.

But the questions begin from here.

What are the boundaries of what can be tokenized?

In reality, these boundaries are expanding beyond financial assets to nature.

In 2024, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) attempted to create regulations that would allow a new type of company called a Natural Asset Company (NAC) to be listed. This was a plan to connect the ecosystem services and management rights generated by natural assets like forests and land to corporate value. After much controversy, the NYSE withdrew the related listing regulations on January 17, 2024. However, the trend of viewing nature as an investable asset has not disappeared.

On the contrary, the World Economic Forum (WEF), in a report released with McKinsey in 2025, presented various financial instruments to attract private capital to nature, including NACs, biodiversity credits, ecosystem service payment systems, and nature-linked bonds and loans. This indicates a shift from viewing nature solely as a public good that needs to be preserved to seeing it as a new asset class that can generate investment returns.

Experiments directly combining blockchain are also underway. Estonia-based Single.Earth operates a model that evaluates carbon absorption and ecosystem status of forests and rewards landowners with 'MERIT' tokens. This concept aims to convert the ecological value provided by nature into digital assets and to provide economic rewards for conservation itself.

Similar experiments have emerged in Panama. The Panama Ministry of Environment and O.N.E Amazon signed a memorandum of understanding for long-term conservation in the Darién region in 2025. This project includes technologies for observing forests and biodiversity, as well as conservation finance models, and there is a possibility of reviewing 'nature-based digital financial instruments' in the future. However, describing this at the current stage as 'the Panama government tokenizing and selling forests' is an exaggeration. It is still in the stages of cooperation, demonstration, and financial model review.

The 'Sango' project in the Central African Republic has proposed an even more explicit plan. The government aimed to include the tokenization of natural resources such as gold, diamonds, and iron ore, as well as land transactions, on the platform. However, according to an IMF analysis, actual token sales fell significantly short of initial plans, many functions were not implemented, and some plans surrounding land and natural resources faced constitutional court judgments and legal uncertainties. This case illustrates not only the potential of tokenization but also the legal and political conflicts that can arise when converting national assets into digital financial products.

It is also inappropriate to simply criticize this trend as "buying and selling nature."

If logging is more profitable than preserving forests, then assigning economic value to conservation is a meaningful attempt. Tokenization and digital measurement technologies could attract private capital to ecosystem protection. It is also a reality that public finances alone have limitations in responding to climate crises and biodiversity loss.

However, the moment a price is assigned, issues of rights arise.

Who measures the value of nature? Who issues the tokens? Who holds stronger rights between investors with tokens and residents who have lived on that land? Who benefits from the profits generated in the ecosystem? When market prices fall, does the public interest of nature conservation continue?

When tokenization creates a new market, these questions become issues of ownership and power rather than environmental issues.

In discussions surrounding humans, more nuanced distinctions are necessary.

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), which invest capital in social outcomes and pay returns based on results, and human capital assessments that quantify education, health, and productivity have existed for a long time. However, directly calling this 'tokenization of humans' is inaccurate. The financialization of social outcomes and blockchain tokenization are different concepts.

What matters is not whether humans themselves are becoming tokens.

It is the fact that identity, assets, transactions, biometric information, and behavioral data are increasingly being connected within a single digital infrastructure.

Blockchain is neither a surveillance technology nor a liberation technology in itself. However, the transaction history of public blockchains is fundamentally public. While addresses do not have names attached, once linked with customer verification information (KYC) from exchanges or other data, a significant portion of an individual's financial flow can be traced.

The advantage of blockchain that recorded transactions do not easily disappear also represents a strong traceability from the opposite perspective.

The programmability of digital currencies is similar.

Using smart contracts, payments can be automatically made when specific conditions are met. This is efficient and can create significant innovations in supply chain finance, subsidy payments, and securities settlements.

However, 'conditional payments' and 'controlling the use of the currency itself' must be distinguished.

The European Central Bank (ECB) has stated that while it can support conditional payments based on delivery completion or contract fulfillment in the digital euro, it will not introduce so-called 'programmable money' that restricts the place, duration, and counterparties of currency issuance.

This distinction is important.

Technically possible does not mean institutionally permissible.

In the humanitarian field, technology cannot be viewed solely as a surveillance tool. The World Food Programme (WFP)'s 'Building Blocks' is a system that uses blockchain to reduce duplication of support from various relief agencies. WFP explicitly states that it does not store sensitive information such as names, birth dates, or biometric information on that blockchain.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has also provided USDC to Ukrainian refugees through digital wallets. However, the funds provided are designed to allow recipients to convert them into cash or transfer them to personal accounts. Claiming this as 'digital currency that controls the use' is not accurate.

At this point, discussions surrounding tokenization must move beyond conspiracy theories and technological optimism.

Describing all tokenization as a project for a small elite to control the world distorts reality. Conversely, believing that blockchain is a decentralized technology that automatically expands individual freedoms is naive.

Technology does not eliminate power; it merely changes how power operates.

Even with distributed ledgers, the authority to issue tokens can be concentrated in one place. Even with smart contracts, a few may hold the authority to change the code. Even if individuals possess digital wallets, the authority to freeze assets or block access may remain with central operators.

This means that even if it appears distributed on the surface, real power can become more concentrated.

Thus, the real issue of tokenization is not technology but governance.

Who issues the tokens?

Who can freeze assets?

Who can view transaction histories?

Who can change the conditions of smart contracts?

Who owns the data?

And can citizens and users challenge the decisions of the system?

Tokenization that does not answer these questions is hard to call an innovation.

Korea is no longer outside this debate.

The amendment to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act for the institutionalization of token securities passed the National Assembly plenary session in January 2026. The core is recognizing distributed ledgers as securities account books and allowing the circulation of investment contract securities. The Financial Services Commission is preparing the token securities infrastructure and issuance and circulation systems in line with the law's implementation.

The Bank of Korea is also conducting demonstrations of new digital payment methods such as deposit tokens through 'Project Han River.' Phase two of the project will be fully promoted in 2026.

Therefore, the questions that Korea must now ask should not remain at the level of "Should we allow tokenization?"

Discussions should expand to what assets to tokenize, how to protect investors' rights, how much personal information to record, and how much control to allow issuers and platforms.

Privacy-preserving cryptographic technologies and principles of minimal data collection are also necessary. The authority to freeze, recover, or change tokens must be transparently disclosed. If financializing natural assets, the rights of local communities and land users, as well as principles of benefit sharing, must be included in contracts from the outset.

We must draw the boundaries of rights before the possibilities of technology.

Tokenization can undoubtedly be a massive innovation. It can reduce inefficiencies in capital markets, open up assets that were previously difficult to access, and create new reward systems for values that existing markets could not price.

However, just because something can be tokenized does not mean it should be tokenized.

Being able to assign prices to everything does not mean everything can be left to the market.

In the future, the boundaries between finance and the real world will collapse even faster. Assets and data, identities and payment systems are also likely to become more closely interconnected. At that time, the most dangerous thing is not the technology itself. It is the authority hiding in the code while citizens do not understand.

In an era where everything becomes a token, we must ask more persistently:

Whose assets are they?

Who makes the rules?

Who holds the control?

And ultimately,

Whose innovation is it?

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