Market | April 6, 2026
IMF Says Tokenization Is Reaching Finance's Core Plumbing
A new IMF note argues that programmable ledgers are moving from crypto experiments into banks, market infrastructure, and settlement itself, bringing faster execution and a thinner margin for error.
In an IMF note published April 2, Tobias Adrian argues that tokenization has moved past the stage of simple efficiency gains. The change is now effecting regulated finance: banks, asset managers, and market infrastructures putting money, securities, and collateral onto programmable ledgers. Institutions are moving onchain.
Adrian says the old-world, offchain delays were acting as shock absorbers. End-of-day settlement, batch processing, and delayed reconciliation gave firms time to net exposures, move liquidity, and intervene before settlement became final. On a tokenized rail, delivery versus payment can happen atomically and collateral can move in near real time. So banks can issue tokenized deposits. Asset managers can automate fund operations and collateral flows. Financial market infrastructures can collapse messaging, custody, and settlement onto one shared ledger. Yet the risk does not disappear. It moves into code, data feeds, governance keys, and the operational design of the platform itself. The paper says a faulty feed or coding error can trigger cascading liquidations before supervisors have time to respond.