First, the number of transactions could quickly overwhelm even the most efficient blockchain. TheU.S. payments system alone processes almost 550 million retail transactions daily using money, in the form of dollars, as a vehicle. This number would increase multiple times if payments were made not with a common vehicle, like dollars or other sovereign currency, but with tokenized assets that could be traded globally.

Today, a car can be purchased with one payment transaction, with dollars flowing from the buyer’s bank account to the seller’s bank account. In a tokenized system, I could instead pay for a car mixing some tokenized securities with some bitcoin and tokenized fractions of a warehouse I own with ten other people. In this case, three payment transactions would have to happen to complete a single purchase, one for each type of tokenized asset used.

Things would get even more complex if my tokenized assets existed in different blockchains or if sellers didn’t already have her own addresses or wallets in all these blockchains to receive the tokens offered in payment.Interoperability between blockchains is possible but usually comes with additional costs and risks. Tokens tend to bemore easily stolen or lost when a bridge or protocol has to be used to move them from one blockchain to another.