Making America the Tokenization
Capital of the World

A $30+ trillion opportunity is emerging as global assets move onchain. The time is now to ensure that the next generation of global financial infrastructure is built around American values, institutions, and technologies.

The U.S. must empower its financial institutions, fintechs, and startups to tokenize their assets, such as equities, commodities, funds, real estate, and more, as well as build blockchain-based financial services for interacting with these tokenized assets.

Why It Matters

Historically, U.S. financial innovation has expanded America's global market dominance and reinforced the dollar's supremacy. If the U.S. fails to lead in this new onchain era, it risks ceding those advantages to faster-moving jurisdictions.

During the Internet boom, the U.S. had a structural advantage that positioned it as the primary beneficiary. In the blockchain era, that advantage is not guaranteed. While the U.S. dollar dominates stablecoin issuance today, tokenized U.S. financial assets must evolve beyond basic stablecoin formats for America to maintain its leading position in the global financial system.

What It Takes for the U.S. to Become the Global Leader

America needs to leverage its existing strengths of having the most reliable capital markets, the largest domestic financial system, and the top institutions for issuing and managing financial assets. To apply these strengths to blockchain, the U.S. must lead in issuing the highest quality tokenized assets.

Ensuring the highest quality financial assets are tokenized in America requires:

• Proof of Reserves:
  Proof of reserves allows tokenized assets to be continuously verified onchain, ensuring they are fully backed and transparent to all market participants. This approach replaces the outdated annual audit model, which has historically been unreliable in situations, such as the Bernie Madoff scheme and the Wirecard fraud. Proof of reserves establishes a new global standard for transparency that U.S. institutions are uniquely positioned to lead
• Automated Compliance:
  The most costly part of financial operations is compliance. Tokenized assets need an automated compliance solution that can attach key data, such as accredited investor status or KYC/AML information, to the asset itself, rather than requiring each financial institution to run duplicative compliance checks. Global banks and exchanges can then wrap and repackage financial assets tokenized in the U.S. with lower costs and less friction than traditional assets, replicating the success and U.S. dominance seen with stablecoins and the U.S. dollar.
• Unified Golden Record:
  Tokenized assets must also support a Unified Golden Record, which is a single, consolidated source of truth about an asset, including the ownership record, compliance requirements, and critical financial price and identity data. This data container must be continuously updated in near real time to ensure it remains accurate and can be evaluated transparently at any time by all market participants and financial regulators.

The Path Forward

America has the institutions, talent, and infrastructure to lead the next era of global finance. But leadership is not just about innovation. It is about setting the standards that others follow and acting before others define the future for us.

The window of opportunity is open now. By putting in place the trust, compliance, and data infrastructure that tokenization requires, the U.S. can secure its role at the center of the new global financial system. This means giving institutions the tools to issue high-quality digital assets, ensuring regulators have access to real-time data, and enabling financial products that are more transparent, secure, and globally accessible.

It is not just a competitive advantage.

It is a strategic imperative.

To learn how you or your organization can help shape this transformation, contact the Chainlink Labs Government Affairs team at [email protected].