Tokenized Assets: Dispelling the Myth of Their Essence for the Needs of Real Economy

Abstract

The paper offers a generalized author’s view on the new phenomenon of the digital world, backed tokenized assets, as a tool for asset accounting in digital accounting systems. This view is new and currently unpopular in the literature since the main aspect of tokenized asset presentation is related to speculation on financial markets, widespread creation of unbacked assets around objects of human life, graphics, etc. The aim of the paper is to determine the essence, generic features and technological basis of the use of tokenized assets for their implementation in the digital and platform-based economy. In accordance with this aim, the author logically presents the material from the general to the specific, analyzing the essential features of 7 main related concepts: distributed ledger, distributed ledger technologies, blockchain technology, tokens and consensus algorithm, tokenized asset, decentralized information platform and blockchain-based ecosystem of services. The author persists in the opinion that a tokenized asset is a type of virtual asset. It is a tool for certifying sufficient and confirmed legal rights: rights of access to products and services, rights to a certain product or service, rights to receive a fixed income or percentage of profits, management rights, rights to purchase a certain asset at a certain price in the future, etc. The paper offers the original definition of a tokenized asset: tokenized asset is a type of virtual asset that exists in a digital data accounting system based on the distributed ledger technology in the form of a record with an identifier of information derived from the original asset. A tokenized asset can be used as a tool for implementing a method of recording, accounting and managing property rights to assets. Moreover, a tokenized asset can be used as a tool for certifying any rights; providing services; recording events; generating, processing and submitting statistical and analytical information; ensuring logistics, etc. Depending on the purpose of creating a specific tokenized asset and, as a result, certain inherent properties envisaged by the creator, this tokenized asset can be classified as a separate type.