UBS's Ka Yan Chan: Tokenization Alone Won't Create Liquidity

Tokenizing an asset doesn't conjure up a market for it. That's the message UBS's Ka Yan Chan brought to the Longitude conference, according to a report from Cointelegraph.

Chan laid out what actually drives liquidity: demand for the underlying asset, the market makers willing to quote it, and how deep the order book runs. Those forces don't appear just because an asset gets wrapped in a token.

She did credit tokenization with a real benefit, though — it can expand market access and pull in more participants. In other words, more people can reach the asset. Whether they can trade it smoothly at scale is a separate question.

The distinction matters as banks and asset managers keep pushing real-world assets onchain, a theme that has dominated industry conferences and roadmaps. Chan's framing suggests the technology widens the front door without necessarily stocking the shelves behind it.

For builders and issuers, the takeaway is blunt: access and liquidity are two different problems. Solving the first won't automatically solve the second.