opened<\/a> the talk, held on Jan. 21, by recalling the early real-estate hype and noting that in 2026 \u201cbanks, asset managers, crypto players [and] other innovators have been quietly working on the innovation,\u201d while the Trump family is \u201cpromising to bring real estate assets onto the blockchain and to tokenize Trump properties this year.\u201d Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters argued the industry is now at \u201ca major inflection point,\u201d saying he has \u201cno doubt\u201d that \u201ceventually all things will settle in digital, digitized form,\u201d even if regulation across \u201c60 plus regulators\u201d dictates how fast that journey happens.<\/p>\nEuroclear CEO Val\u00e9rie Urbain framed tokenization as an evolution of securities markets that can \u201creach out to a bigger range of investors\u201d and \u201cgive access to finance to many more people,\u201d explicitly tying it to financial inclusion. A joint pilot with Banque de France aims to tokenize France\u2019s commercial paper market, some \u201c\u20ac300 billion\u2026 small enough to make sure that we can all learn the lessons and see how we can transpose this initiative in a broader sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Democratization, Bitcoin standard and the sovereignty fault line<\/h2>\n
Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong pushed the access narrative hard, arguing tokenization\u2019s \u201cmost powerful part\u2026 is just democratization of access to investment in high\u2011quality products,\u201d noting an \u201cunbrokered\u201d world of \u201cabout 4 billion adults who don\u2019t have access or any ability to invest in high\u2011quality assets like the US stock market or real estate.\u201d He cast crypto as the birth of \u201ca new monetary system that I would call the Bitcoin standard instead of the gold standard\u2026 a return to sound money and something that is inflation resistant\u201d as democracies struggle with deficits and fiat inflation.<\/p>\n
Villeroy de Galhau pushed back bluntly: \u201cI am a bit skeptical\u2026 about this idea of the Bitcoin standard,\u201d warning that \u201cmonetary policy and money is part of society\u201d and that losing the public role would mean losing \u201ca key function of democracy.\u201d Money, he insisted, remains a \u201cpublic\u2011private partnership,\u201d with CBDC as anchor and \u201ctokenized private money\u201d strictly regulated or risk a \u201cGresham\u2019s law\u201d dynamic where bad private money dominates transactions while CBDC is hoarded as store of value.<\/p>\n
From stablecoin scale to regulatory trench warfare<\/h2>\n
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse highlighted just how far the first \u201cposter child of tokenization\u201d has already run: \u201cstable coins\u2026 went from in 2024 $19 trillion of transactions\u2026 and 2025 is $33 trillion, so about 75% growth.\u201d On Ripple\u2019s own XRP Ledger, he said, \u201ctokenized assets\u2026 surged over 2,200% last year.\u201d He argued the United States has shifted from being \u201cpretty openly hostile\u201d to crypto to electing a \u201cmuch more pro\u2011crypto, pro\u2011innovation Congress,\u201d with the industry pushing for \u201cclarity\u2026 better than chaos\u201d after Ripple\u2019s five\u2011year legal fight with Washington.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Armstrong used the stalled US \u201cClarity Act\u201d and the ongoing stablecoin rewards fight to attack what he called lobbying efforts trying \u201cto put their thumb on the scale and ban their competition,\u201d insisting consumers should \u201cearn more money on their money.\u201d At the same time, he warned that offshore stablecoins and China\u2019s interest\u2011bearing CBDC mean that banning rewards would simply push activity abroad, undermining US and European competitiveness.<\/p>\n
Villeroy de Galhau rejected the idea of a remunerated digital euro, calling \u201cinnovation without regulation\u201d a recipe for \u201cserious trust issues\u201d and potentially \u201cfinancial crisis\u2026 born of misleaded or dangerous financial innovations.\u201d The public purpose, he said, is \u201cto preserve the stability of the financial system,\u201d and CBDC is \u201cnot intended to attack the banking system and its deposits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emerging markets, dollarization and the capacity question<\/h2>\n
The panel repeatedly circled back to the global south. Winters warned tokenization could mean \u201ca full dollarization\u201d for some emerging economies, even as it delivers \u201cserious cost savings on the cross\u2011border business.\u201d Villeroy de Galhau noted some G20 emerging powers have openly argued \u201cwe should forbid cryptos,\u201d a path he rejects as sacrificing innovation but which underlines sovereignty fears. At the same time, he pointed out that countries such as Brazil and India are already global leaders in fast payments with Pix and UPI, even if they remain cautious on on\u2011chain currencies.<\/p>\n
Environmental concerns surfaced briefly. Asked whether blockchain tokenization can coexist with AI\u2019s voracious energy demand, Garlinghouse drew a sharp line between consensus models: \u201cnot all layer 1 blockchains are created equal,\u201d stressing that proof\u2011of\u2011stake systems use \u201c99.9% less energy than proof\u2011of\u2011work,\u201d and that \u201cmost of the activity of stable coins today is on more power efficient blockchains\u201d like post\u2011Merge Ethereum.<\/p>\n
Crypto prices: where the market stands<\/h2>\n
The debate in Davos unfolded against a market backdrop where Bitcoin trades just under the psychological six\u2011figure mark. As of Jan. 22, 2026, Bitcoin changes hands around $89,800\u2013$90,000, roughly flat to modestly higher over the past 24 hours, with MetaMask data showing today\u2019s price at about $89,791, up 0.67% from roughly $89,195 a day earlier. Ether holds near the tokenization narrative it increasingly underpins: around $3,000 per ETH, with MetaMask listing $3,003.33 today, a 1.26% gain on the previous day\u2019s $2,965.92, while Bybit quotes $2,998.95 with a 24\u2011hour range between roughly $2,872 and $3,053. Tether\u2019s USDT, the largest stablecoin and de facto settlement rail for much of this ecosystem, trades almost perfectly on\u2011peg at about $0.9992, with a 24\u2011hour change of roughly +0.05%, a market capitalization near $186.9 billion, and reported daily volume just over $110 billion.<\/p>\n
These numbers underscore the panel\u2019s central tension: a crypto market already operating at multi\u2011trillion\u2011dollar scale, while policymakers, bankers and builders wrestle\u2014in public\u2014over who ultimately writes the rules for the tokenized future.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, central bankers, Coinbase, Ripple and banks clash over tokenization, a Bitcoin \u2018standard,\u2019 CBDCs and stablecoin yields as crypto trades near record highs. Summary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20405,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20403\/revisions\/20405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}