Ripple and BlackRock help Dubai's DFSA write its tokenization playbook

Ripple, BlackRock, Standard Chartered and Robinhood all lent their people to a white paper commissioned by the Dubai Financial Services Authority. The report, titled 'Scaling Tokenization: The Road Ahead,' works through what it would actually take to grow tokenized financial assets responsibly, including inside the Dubai International Financial Centre.

Ripple's managing director for the Middle East and Africa, Reece Merrick, was among the contributors. BlackRock sent Tony Ashraf, its head of technology and operations and head of digital assets for the region. Robinhood's Coy Garrison, Standard Chartered's René Michau, Soter Insure founder Henson Orser and the DFSA's Herman Schueller also signed on.

The DFSA's own read is bullish on the concept. Tokenizing traditional financial assets could become a major development in mainstream markets, the report says, promising wider investor access, more efficiency for issuers and intermediaries, and lower risk in certain spots — settlement especially.

Merrick argues the story is bigger than tokenized treasuries and money market funds stacking up assets. The real shift, he says, is those products being used on-chain as collateral in repo and margin without being redeemed for cash first. Repo markets already move trillions daily, and he expects massive growth there over the next 12 months — with a significant slice of it happening on the XRP Ledger. Clear frameworks, institutional custody and trusted settlement assets like RLUSD put the UAE, the DIFC and Ripple at the front of that phase, he said.

Nobody agrees on how big this gets. Citi Institute's base case puts the global market for tokenized financial assets at $5.5 trillion by 2030. A separate paper from Standard Chartered and Synpulse estimated demand could climb to $30.1 trillion by 2034.