Grayscale research head lays out bets on $19T tokenization wave

Pandl pointed to the Canton Network (CC), backed by Wall Street giants like DRW, TradeWeb, Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq, as a potential winner in this early phase of tokenization.

He said it is “a perfectly reasonable investment” for investors who want nearer-term traction, even if Canton‘s approach represents only “a slightly different, slightly upgraded version” of today’s financial system.

The second phase

The second phase of tokenization could be a hybrid model where we have both institution-owned blockchains and a global shared state, with those networks interconnected and speaking to each other. One example for that is Avalanche (AVAX), with hundreds of sovereign, corporate-owned chains (called subnets) live but connected to a primary, layer-1 network.

Ethereums ether (ETH), in his view, is the bigger but slower bet. Pandl said he believes the market will eventually move toward “global decentralized finance,” but added that “the tech is not fully ready” and that institutions are not ready either.

That makes ETH the more ambitious investment for those willing to wait for the longer-term shift away from financial intermediaries.

There are also picks-and-shovels plays. Pandl highlighted chain-agnostic service providers such as Chainlink as another way to get exposure, saying they may be “even more compelling” than some blockchains.