Tokenization Unfiltered: Making Sense of a Financial System Being Rebuilt in Front of Us

Over the past year at TokenisingStartups, we have watched tokenisation move from something that could still be dismissed as an interesting experiment into an increasingly serious part of the financial infrastructure conversation.

Banks are issuing tokenised bonds and exploring tokenised deposits. Asset managers are putting funds on-chain. Exchanges are developing tokenised securities infrastructure. Regulators are creating new frameworks for digital assets. And in the UK, PISCES is testing whether private-company shares can have a more structured route to secondary liquidity without immediately requiring an IPO.

Individually, these developments are interesting. Taken together, they raise a much bigger question: Are we watching the infrastructure of finance being rebuilt?

That question sits at the heart of Tokenization Unfiltered: Understanding the Biggest Ever Replumbing of Global Finance, the new book co-written by Shawn Jhanji and Mark Mason-Gallie.

As editor of TokenisingStartups.com and one of the book's authors, I've spent much of the past year watching and reporting on these developments. The book evolved alongside that process. The more announcements we followed, the more the individual pieces began to connect: tokenised assets, custody, settlement, regulation, market structure, private-company liquidity and the changing role of exchanges and financial-market infrastructure.

The book is an attempt to join some of those dots.

Beyond the token

Neither Mark nor I started this as tokenisation experts. Nor are we now. We came to the subject from different directions, spent a considerable amount of time trying to understand it, challenged what we found and followed the evidence as the market developed.

My own route came through startups, founders, investment and an interest in whether the systems through which capital is allocated could be made fairer, more accessible and less dependent on established networks and gatekeepers. Exploring alternative models, including DAOs, eventually led me into blockchain and then tokenisation.

Mark brought a different perspective, with senior management and CEO experience, and our understanding evolved as we explored the subject together. The result isn't intended to be a technical textbook. It is an attempt to understand what tokenisation actually changes, where it may create genuine value, and where the technology doesn't solve the underlying problem by itself.

A token doesn't create a buyer. A digital representation of an asset doesn't automatically establish legal ownership. Faster settlement doesn't remove credit risk. And putting something on a blockchain doesn't make it compliant simply because the technology can support it.

The more important question is therefore not simply what blockchain can do, but what better infrastructure might make possible.

Why PISCES features so prominently

Readers will notice that PISCES receives considerable attention in the book and that's deliberate.

The book isn't about PISCES. Its starting point was much broader, looking at tokenisation across real-world assets, equity, debt, property, funds and digital assets, alongside the regulation and infrastructure developing around them.

But as we explored the implications for startups and growing businesses, the question of liquidity became increasingly important. A successful startup doesn't necessarily stop having capital-market problems once it has raised funding. Founders may eventually want to realise some value. Employees may hold equity that remains difficult to monetise. Early investors may want a partial exit. And a successful private company may want to remain private without forcing shareholders to wait for an acquisition or IPO before they have a meaningful route to liquidity.

This is where PISCES becomes particularly interesting.

Its potential significance isn't simply that it creates another mechanism for private-company shares to change hands. It could help separate shareholder liquidity from the decision to become a public company.

PISCES doesn't replace an IPO. A company may still need the primary capital, public valuation, visibility or other benefits of being listed. But it potentially offers another answer to the narrower question of how existing shareholders can realise some value while a company remains private. And that potentially extends well beyond startups to successful scaling businesses and SMEs, including situations where succession rather than venture capital is the central issue.

Whether that potential develops in practice is another question. PISCES is new, trading is intermittent, participation is regulated and most retail investors are currently excluded. Those constraints are part of the experiment, not footnotes to it.

The wider picture

The PISCES discussion sits within a much broader examination of tokenisation.

The book looks at real-world assets, bonds, private credit, funds, property and equities, as well as custody, settlement, regulation, investor protection and systemic risk. It also tries to distinguish between institutional enthusiasm and genuine adoption.

The evidence increasingly suggests that some of the earliest significant applications may be relatively unglamorous: tokenised cash and payments, fixed income, funds and settlement infrastructure, where the efficiency case is clearest and regulatory uncertainty is comparatively lower.

That matters because tokenisation may not arrive as one dramatic event. It may happen progressively through changes in the financial plumbing that most people never see.

Settlement becomes faster. Records become more connected. Ownership becomes easier to transfer. Payments and securities interact more directly. And over time, those changes could alter the economics and structure of markets that currently depend on fragmented systems and multiple layers of intermediaries. But none of that is inevitable.

There are still significant questions around regulation, custody, interoperability, investor protection, legal enforceability and systemic risk and there are also plenty of claims about tokenisation that deserve more scepticism than they sometimes receive. That is why Tokenization Unfiltered tries to examine the limitations as well as the opportunities.

The book has already been updated as the market has developed, and it is likely to evolve again. That feels appropriate for a subject where the infrastructure, regulation and commercial models are still being built while we are watching.

For TokenisingStartups.com, there is something particularly satisfying about that connection. The book has evolved directly from the developments, questions and debates we have been following and reporting here.

The technology is interesting. What it makes possible is much more interesting.

Tokenization Unfiltered: Understanding the Biggest Ever Replumbing of Global Finance

By Mark Mason-Gallie and Shawn Jhanji

Published 2026

Buy the book

Disclosure: Shawn Jhanji, co-author of the book, is the editor of TokenisingStartups. So yes, there is a little bit of self-promotion here. But the book has also evolved directly from the developments and questions we have been following and reporting on this site.