Tokenization could free up tens of billions of dollars in capital tied up in assets used as collateral across the global financial system, Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman said.
Tokenizing assets such as Treasurys, equities and money market funds, along with the flow of money, could make collateral more liquid, Friedman told CNBC's Joanna Ossinger, managing editor and head of APAC Digital News, at the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore.
"If you tokenize all those instruments along with the flow of money, then the collateral becomes very fluid," Friedman said.
Tokenization involves representing financial assets, such as stocks and bonds, as digital tokens that can be transferred using blockchain technology.
Friedman said institutional interest in tokenization has grown over the past year, pointing in part to the passage of the Genius Act in the U.S., which established a regulatory framework for stablecoins.