The policy paper claims that access to capital markets, not income or banks, increasingly determines who may generate wealth. It also suggests that tokenisation could make it easier for more people to participate.
A new analysis from the Coinbase Institute says that the biggest division in global finance is not between affluent and poor people, but between people who can directly access financial markets and people who can’t. The report calls these two groups “brokered” and “unbrokered.”
The “Capital Chasm” between brokered and unbrokered populations
The paper says that traditional intermediated railroads restrict about four billion people who aren’t brokers from owning productive assets or raising a lot of money. It says that closing this gap will involve upgrading the basic market infrastructure so that smaller investors and issuers may take part directly instead of through layers of middlemen.
The paper says that in the US alone, capital income climbed 136% during the last 40 years, while labour income only grew 57%.
The main point of the study is that access to capital markets, not just basic banking, is what really controls the production of wealth.
Traditional systems depend on layers of brokers, custodians, and clearinghouses, which makes it too expensive to service smaller investors or issuers. This creates a “capital chasm” between the brokered minority and everyone else.
At the same time, advanced economies have a lot of equities, bonds, and funds owned by already-brokered households.
Permissionless infrastructure as a path to inclusion
Coinbase’s point is that tokenisation is important, but permissionless tokenisation is even more important if the unbrokered are to profit.
The paper says that permissioned consortia and closed business blockchain solutions tend to copy the power structures that already exist, with a few gatekeepers controlling who can issue, list, or access tokenised assets.
In contrast, it compares an open, permissionless design to internet protocols like TCP/IP, which allow anyone to build on the same rails and can’t be silently cancelled later. Tokenisation is already going on.
Tokenisation moves from theory to live markets
The research comes out at a time when tokenisation is already going from pitch decks to real life in both crypto and traditional banking.
For example, Franklin Templeton’s tokenised US money market fund shares, which are issued on public blockchains, allow investors onchain fund units that can settle faster while still following the regulations for securities.
JPMorgan maintains a live tokenised collateral network on its Kinexys platform in the banking world. It uses blockchain-based tokens that stand for assets like money market fund shares to move collateral between institutional clients more quickly while maintaining the assets on the bank’s balance sheet.
On Monday, the New York Stock Exchange announced a plan for a 24/7 trading platform for tokenised stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that will use blockchain-based post-trade infrastructure and stablecoin settlement.
The report comes out at the same time as the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, wrote on X that he expected to utilise meetings to talk about market structure laws, tokenisation, and what he called “economic freedom through updated financial systems.”