Token effort is no blockchain boon for illiquid assets

Cash-like tokenised instruments find takers; initiatives based on less liquid assets struggle to take off

Tokenisation – creating a digital representation of traditional assets via blockchain – offers the prospect of liquidity in hard-to-reach assets to categories of retail investors for whom they are otherwise off limits.

In theory at least, tokens could democratise the kind of investment previously inaccessible to swaths of investors – offering them round-the-clock trading in secondary markets into the bargain.

Exponents of tokenisation say expressing fractional interests of illiquid assets on