The future of RWA tokenization

ExCeL London is a familiar place for me, home to the gambling industry’s ICE (International Casino Exhibition) for 12 amazing years, the London Blockchain Conference in 2024, and iGB Live in 2025. This time, I returned to the ExCeL to attend the inaugural TokenizeLDN, a blockchain event co-located with its more established partner, FinTech Connect, from December 2-3.

TokenizeLDN consisted of two content stages: the RWA (Real World Asset) Tokenization Stage and the Blockchain and Web3 Innovation Stage, featuring hundreds of exhibitors and thousands of delegates across both events. I had the honor of moderating the “Road to Enterprise Adoption” panel on the RWA Tokenization stage, featuring speakers from Barclays, Citi (NASDAQ: C), Standard Chartered, and Midnight.

Throughout the event’s two days, I met professionals from big banks and enterprises, asset managers, DeFi builders, regulators, and more, “a mishmash of everyone involved in the industry,” as Event Director Chris Comer likes to put it.

“It’s basically DeFi meets TradFi, and it’s for the acceleration of real-world assets and tokenisation in the UK. It’s all about bringing the real-world asset projects, the tokenisation platforms, in front of the institutional investors in the U.K.,” Comer said of the event during our interview.

Albert Berdellans, Head of AI for Invenium, one of the startups in attendance, had nothing but positive things to say about his experience at TokenizeLDN.

“It’s been incredibly refreshing to see so many people that are so forward-thinking and to see an area like London, which is a global financial hub, start to embrace or continue to embrace these emerging technologies in a way that can actually transform real-world use cases for the financial industry,” he shared.

David Palmer, Chief Product Officer and Co-founder of Pairpoint by Vodafone, chaired the Web3 Innovation Stage, said the trend in 2025has been about real use cases, real businesses, real banks launching real products that are on-chain.

“That’s why you’re seeing banks and enterprises moving to this space, and it’s needed because that’s where the liquidity will come from, that’s where the revenues will come from, and that’s what will bring around the next generation of growth in the product,” he said.

In addition to featuring the biggest projects in the DeFi space, TokenizeLDN provided an opportunity for lesser-known projects to shine and share their exceptional work, including startups such as Invenium, Ubiquom, and more.

“Ubiquom is really about democratizing access and providing sovereign identity. So for creators and intellectual property owners, they’re all about making sure that those people own, manage, monetize, and have access to the products that they’re making,” shared Simon Stimpson, Chairman of Ubiquim, after his on-stage demo.

After Invenium’s on-stage demo, Berdellans summed up the project as a decentralized data management platform for the finance industry, focusing mostly on real-world assets and private market assets.

Back to the top ↑

Opportunities in the blockchain space, such as supply chain, were also explored, with Kelroy James, Supply Chain Manager of Defence Innovation Champions Network at the Royal Navy, delivering an insightful presentation on this subject at the Web3 Innovation stage.

“It can take a long time to pay suppliers, so if you can have a blockchain system that can have verification for payment from supplier to end user, that would increase the cash flow. I would think that would be as a good use case for blockchain,” he said.

Where artificial intelligence (AI) intersects with blockchain was also a big topic (surprise, surprise), especially within the startup space.

“In a lot of ways blockchain has been a solution in search of a problem and now that AI is going to be unleashed at scale and there’s going to be a whole bunch of automation of everything, I think blockchain’s going to finally hit its stride as an integrity layer that can be scalable but still controllable at that same velocity,” Berdellans said.

James added where the Internet of Things (IoT) fits into the picture.

“Blockchain is part of what I call a Triumvirate of a technology stack. It includes IoT, you add your IoT with blockchain and then AI now will be able to do the work for you as an agentic AI,” he said.

“You can process all of the data being fed by your IoT sensors and being certified by blockchain, so you have that triangle that is going to create the technology stack for the future,” James added.

As someone who has been studying the blockchain space since the early 2010s, it’s refreshing to see the full potential of blockchain finally being realized. Believe it or not, we have the regulators to thank for acting as one of the major catalysts.

“I think that the last two, three years was spent to regulation. Regulation now is clear. We know how to do business, so now it’s time for the financial institutions to move forward, to create the foundation that we have already done, and now to work on the institutionalization,” Laurant Marochini, CEO of Standard Chartered, shared.

Looking back on my experience at the very first TokenizeLDN, it was nothing short of amazing. I enjoyed meeting so many new people and even bumping into some contacts of mine from the online gambling world. Comer and his team did a fantastic job of facilitating friendly, productive conversations across the two days, and I must say, East 17’s live performance during the networking drinks was an extra special, nostalgic treat.

Back to the top ↑

Watch: Bringing the Metanet to life with Teranode