As an eventful year for all things blockchain, 2021 has seen several developments such as the explosion of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), DAOs making a return, El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as legal tender, and the launch of the first Bitcoin futures ETF in the US—which was also the fastest ETF of all-time to reach USD 1 billion in AUM. Amidst this craze, asset or security tokens are gaining traction and showing immense potential to disrupt the financial services space. Tokenization could potentially unlock trillions of dollars in value currently locked in illiquid assets such as private equity and real estate by opening them up to a much larger global investor pool.

Before we dive into security tokens and tokenization, let’s understand how they are different from the more ubiquitous NFTs. While both are “tokens”, security tokens are created on entirely different technical standards and cater to different applications. Some of their key differences are highlighted below: