The world’s entire economy will be tokenized, says Consensys’ Joseph Lubin
The Consensys CEO and founder said tokenization can be traced back to Ethereum, the blockchain he helped co-found.
What to know:
- Joseph Lubin, the founder and CEO of Consensys and an Ethereum co-founder, said at Consensus Miami 2026 that tokenization of virtually the entire global economy is now inevitable rather than experimental.
- Lubin argued that Ethereum’s early design enabling anyone to issue tokens without creating a new blockchain has positioned it to benefit as traditional financial institutions move assets such as stablecoins, Treasuries and other real-world assets on-chain.
- He said Ethereum’s maturing ecosystem—bolstered by layer-2 scaling, synchronous composability and ether’s role as a “trust commodity”—is attracting regulators and traditional finance even as recent disruptions in decentralized finance reflect a still-developing technology.
The global economy is steadily moving on-chain, and Ethereum is structurally positioned to benefit the most, said the founder of Consensys, a blockchain firm founded in 2014 by Lubin, an Ethereum co-founder. His company focuses on building infrastructure, developer tools, and decentralized applications (dApps) primarily for the Ethereum blockchain.
Lubin traced tokenization back to Ethereum’s origins, describing it as the breakthrough that allowed anyone to issue assets without building a new blockchain.
Now, that early design choice is paying off as financial institutions are increasingly moving their assets onto blockchain rails.
Lubin pointed to the evolution from bitcoin as the first decentralised token to Ethereum’s role in enabling the creation of new tokens without building separate blockchains. He said the technology has reached a level of maturity that is drawing in traditional financial institutions and regulators.
