JPMorgan's Scott Lucas argues that tokenization's most profound impact is not just making existing processes faster or cheaper. It's about fundamentally redesigning financial instruments—like paying bond coupons by the millisecond—which could open up debt capital markets to smaller companies that cannot access them today.

The recent explosion of stablecoins wasn't due to a new financial innovation, but the maturation of underlying blockchain infrastructure. Cheaper and faster transactions on Layer 2 solutions and improved Layer 1s finally made large-scale, low-cost payments practical for real-world use.

The key to tokenization is combining two worlds: traditional finance's expertise in legally custodying assets, and crypto's native, free infrastructure for 24/7 trading and liquidity. This fusion makes it possible to make previously untradable assets like private equity, art, or collectibles instantly liquid and accessible.

Scott Lucas of JPMorgan counters the "everything on-chain in 10 years" narrative. He argues the main hurdles aren't technological, but rather the slow, complex process of achieving legal clarity, regulatory understanding, and upgrading massive internal legacy systems across the financial industry. This institutional drag makes a rapid overhaul highly improbable.

Beyond regulatory clarity, a critical hurdle for enterprise adoption of stablecoins is their accounting treatment. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is currently deciding if stablecoins can be classified as cash equivalents on a balance sheet, a move that would significantly lower friction for corporate use.

While stablecoins face regulatory uncertainty, major banks like J.P. Morgan and Boney are developing a competing product: tokenized deposits. These offer the same blockchain efficiencies for fund transfers but operate within the existing, trusted banking regulatory framework, presenting a more attractive, lower-risk alternative for institutional clients.

Despite promising instant, cheap cross-border payments, stablecoins lack features critical for corporate treasurers. The absence of FDIC insurance, a single standard ("singleness of money"), and interoperability between blockchains makes them too risky and fragmented for wholesale use.

Creating synthetic derivatives (like perpetual futures) of traditional assets on-chain is more scalable and efficient than creating direct tokenized copies. This is especially true for assets with high derivative demand, such as emerging market equities.

While stablecoins gain attention, tokenized deposits offer similar benefits—like on-chain transactions—but operate within the existing, trusted regulatory banking framework. As they are simply bank liabilities on a blockchain, they may become a more palatable alternative for corporates seeking efficiency without regulatory uncertainty.