Tokenization boom pits Bitcoin ‘standard’ vs CBDC guardrails at the World Economic Forum

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, central bankers, Coinbase, Ripple and banks clash over tokenization, a Bitcoin ‘standard,’ CBDCs and stablecoin yields as crypto trades near record highs.

Tokenization is no longer a World Economic Forum Davos thought experiment; it is, in the words of Banque de France governor François Villeroy de Galhau, “the name of the game really this year,” promising “progress in global finance, delivery versus payments, [and] diminish of cost of financial transactions.”

Tokenization moves from hype to deployment

Moderator Karen Tso opened the talk, held on Jan. 21, by recalling the early real-estate hype and noting that in 2026 “banks, asset managers, crypto players [and] other innovators have been quietly working on the innovation,” while the Trump family is “promising to bring real estate assets onto the blockchain and to tokenize Trump properties this year.” Standard Chartered CEO Bill Winters argued the industry is now at “a major inflection point,” saying he has “no doubt” that “eventually all things will settle in digital, digitized form,” even if regulation across “60 plus regulators” dictates how fast that journey happens.

Euroclear CEO Valérie Urbain framed tokenization as an evolution of securities markets that can “reach out to a bigger range of investors” and “give access to finance to many more people,” explicitly tying it to financial inclusion. A joint pilot with Banque de France aims to tokenize France’s commercial paper market, some “€300 billion… small enough to make sure that we can all learn the lessons and see how we can transpose this initiative in a broader sense.”

Democratization, Bitcoin standard and the sovereignty fault line

Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong pushed the access narrative hard, arguing tokenization’s “most powerful part… is just democratization of access to investment in high‑quality products,” noting an “unbrokered” world of “about 4 billion adults who don’t have access or any ability to invest in high‑quality assets like the US stock market or real estate.” He cast crypto as the birth of “a new monetary system that I would call the Bitcoin standard instead of the gold standard… a return to sound money and something that is inflation resistant” as democracies struggle with deficits and fiat inflation.

Villeroy de Galhau pushed back bluntly: “I am a bit skeptical… about this idea of the Bitcoin standard,” warning that “monetary policy and money is part of society” and that losing the public role would mean losing “a key function of democracy.” Money, he insisted, remains a “public‑private partnership,” with CBDC as anchor and “tokenized private money” strictly regulated or risk a “Gresham’s law” dynamic where bad private money dominates transactions while CBDC is hoarded as store of value.

From stablecoin scale to regulatory trench warfare

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse highlighted just how far the first “poster child of tokenization” has already run: “stable coins… went from in 2024 $19 trillion of transactions… and 2025 is $33 trillion, so about 75% growth.” On Ripple’s own XRP Ledger, he said, “tokenized assets… surged over 2,200% last year.” He argued the United States has shifted from being “pretty openly hostile” to crypto to electing a “much more pro‑crypto, pro‑innovation Congress,” with the industry pushing for “clarity… better than chaos” after Ripple’s five‑year legal fight with Washington.

Armstrong used the stalled US “Clarity Act” and the ongoing stablecoin rewards fight to attack what he called lobbying efforts trying “to put their thumb on the scale and ban their competition,” insisting consumers should “earn more money on their money.” At the same time, he warned that offshore stablecoins and China’s interest‑bearing CBDC mean that banning rewards would simply push activity abroad, undermining US and European competitiveness.

Villeroy de Galhau rejected the idea of a remunerated digital euro, calling “innovation without regulation” a recipe for “serious trust issues” and potentially “financial crisis… born of misleaded or dangerous financial innovations.” The public purpose, he said, is “to preserve the stability of the financial system,” and CBDC is “not intended to attack the banking system and its deposits.”

Emerging markets, dollarization and the capacity question

The panel repeatedly circled back to the global south. Winters warned tokenization could mean “a full dollarization” for some emerging economies, even as it delivers “serious cost savings on the cross‑border business.” Villeroy de Galhau noted some G20 emerging powers have openly argued “we should forbid cryptos,” a path he rejects as sacrificing innovation but which underlines sovereignty fears. At the same time, he pointed out that countries such as Brazil and India are already global leaders in fast payments with Pix and UPI, even if they remain cautious on on‑chain currencies.

Environmental concerns surfaced briefly. Asked whether blockchain tokenization can coexist with AI’s voracious energy demand, Garlinghouse drew a sharp line between consensus models: “not all layer 1 blockchains are created equal,” stressing that proof‑of‑stake systems use “99.9% less energy than proof‑of‑work,” and that “most of the activity of stable coins today is on more power efficient blockchains” like post‑Merge Ethereum.

Crypto prices: where the market stands

The debate in Davos unfolded against a market backdrop where Bitcoin trades just under the psychological six‑figure mark. As of Jan. 22, 2026, Bitcoin changes hands around $89,800–$90,000, roughly flat to modestly higher over the past 24 hours, with MetaMask data showing today’s price at about $89,791, up 0.67% from roughly $89,195 a day earlier. Ether holds near the tokenization narrative it increasingly underpins: around $3,000 per ETH, with MetaMask listing $3,003.33 today, a 1.26% gain on the previous day’s $2,965.92, while Bybit quotes $2,998.95 with a 24‑hour range between roughly $2,872 and $3,053. Tether’s USDT, the largest stablecoin and de facto settlement rail for much of this ecosystem, trades almost perfectly on‑peg at about $0.9992, with a 24‑hour change of roughly +0.05%, a market capitalization near $186.9 billion, and reported daily volume just over $110 billion.

These numbers underscore the panel’s central tension: a crypto market already operating at multi‑trillion‑dollar scale, while policymakers, bankers and builders wrestle—in public—over who ultimately writes the rules for the tokenized future.