Top Asset Managers Declare Tokenization Infrastructure Real
At the Ondo Summit in New York on February 3, 2026, executives from financial giants Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, State Street, and WisdomTree delivered a unified message: the infrastructure for tokenizing real-world assets is no longer a future concept but a present-day reality. This consensus marks a significant shift from experimental phases to practical implementation, signaling that the groundwork for a new era of digital finance is laid.
Franklin Templeton's head of innovation, Sandy Kaul, offered a bold prediction for this new financial landscape, describing it as "wallet-native."
The totality of people’s assets is going to be represented in these wallets.
— Sandy Kaul, Head of Innovation, Franklin Templeton
Focus Shifts From Tech to Trust and Utility
While the panelists agreed the technological foundation is solid, they emphasized the next hurdles are social and operational. The primary challenge has moved from engineering to adoption. Cynthia Lo Bessette, head of digital asset management at Fidelity, stated that the hardest part is now "building the ecosystem for utility" around the tokens themselves. This sentiment was echoed by State Street's Kim Hochfeld, who noted that current work is focused on internal and client education, as a "rush to the door" has not yet materialized.
Tokenization Touted as Solution to 2022 Liquidity Crisis
The executives framed tokenization not just as a novelty but as a critical upgrade to market plumbing. Hochfeld referenced the 2022 UK mini-budget crisis, where traditional fund redemptions created a liquidity spiral. She argued that tokenized funds could have served as instant collateral, easing the disruption and providing a "perfect use case" that benefits managers, collateral pledgers, and regulators. Will Peck of WisdomTree drew a parallel to the introduction of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) 30 years ago, predicting that new tokenized products will ultimately win adoption because they simply "work better," rather than being sought out by name.
