Tokenization: The Freight Train Disrupting Finance

Remember when you had to call your broker to place a trade? Had to wait for them to pick up, execute it, pay a $50 commission?

That world is dead. And the corpse is still warm.

62% of American households now own stocks. Up from 35% in 1990. Not because everyone suddenly got smarter about finance. Because the gatekeepers lost their gates.

Robinhood lets you trade at 3 AM. Interactive Brokers runs 24/5. Crypto never sleeps. The old guard scrambled to catch up while startups ate their lunch.

But here's what the disruption crowd misses: This isn't about day trading or meme stocks.

Watch what's actually happening. ETFs turned entire sectors into one-click purchases. Want exposure to quantum computing? There's an ETF. AI revolution? ETF. Clean energy? Take your pick from dozens.

The real disruption? Tokenization.

Robinhood's CEO calls it "a freight train that can't be stopped." He's underselling it.

Imagine owning 0.1% of that Aspen ski lodge. Or fractional shares of a Basquiat painting. Or a slice of prime Manhattan real estate—without the paperwork.

Real estate's always been the ultimate illiquid asset. Six-figure down payments. Months to close. 6% commissions. Tokenization turns that model into a museum piece.

But wait, there's more disruption.

Prediction markets just became respectable. Polymarket, Kalshi, PredictIt—they're not gambling sites. They're information markets. When people bet real money on outcomes, they're more honest than pollsters will ever be.

The traditional firms? They're building mobile apps while the world moves to a different dimension.

Here's what keeps me up: We're watching the complete dissolution of what constitutes a "financial product."

Savings account? That's a relic. Checking account? A utility at best. Your portfolio? It's morphing into entertainment, prediction, fractional ownership of everything.

Financial services isn't changing. It already changed.

The infrastructure exists. The regulations are catching up. The only question is whether you're building for the world that was or the world that is.

Because in five years, explaining today's financial system to your kids will sound like explaining rotary phones. Quaint. Antiquated. Unbelievable that we ever lived that way.

Wait, what is a rotary phone again?