Former SEC chairman Paul Atkins recently made a bold prediction: tokenization might actually turn the US financial system upside down.

His reasoning is pretty straightforward—the traditional processes for ownership confirmation, clearing, and settlement are too cumbersome, costly, and time-consuming. Once assets are on-chain, these steps can be drastically simplified, pushing transaction efficiency to the max. In other words, tokenization isn’t just a tech upgrade; it’s more like performing surgery on the entire financial infrastructure.

When such words come from a regulator, they carry a different weight. If this model really works, traditional brokers and custodians—those intermediaries—may have to redefine their roles.