Former Goldman Sachs crypto manager Oliver Harris, who has returned to the TradFi world as JPMorgan’s new blockchain chief, once said he believes tokenization alone won’t solve one of the financial world’s key challenges. He cautioned that putting assets on blockchain rails does not automatically make them easier to trade.
“Tokenization does not equal liquidity,” Harris, who will lead JPM’s Kinexys division, said last year during a panel at Consensus Toronto as founder and CEO of Arda, a startup Harris worked on for a year and a half.
The comment underlines a more cautious look at one of the industry’s biggest stories as Harris acquires Kinexys.
In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Harris said his focus will be on expanding digital settlement infrastructure, advancing tokenization capabilities and strengthening partnerships between both public and private blockchain networks.
“The work lays the foundation for the next era of market structure: how money, assets and information move along the chain,” he wrote.
During his panel last year, Harris also reflected on his own journey through the industry, noting repeated attempts to bring tokenization into the mainstream financial sector. “I guess I would call this my third hell loop,” he said, referring to roles at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and his startup Arda. He added that these times may be different given recent advances in technology and regulations.
His broader argument is that real change comes not from tokenizing individual assets, but from reworking the systems that support them. “I’m becoming more interested in the global settlement layer, where you can bring together money, assets and data on one software platform,” he said.
That shift could streamline the way markets work. “You can basically rip out the back end of these established, old industries and replace them with… blockchains,” he said, describing a future where markets run continuously and assets can communicate with each other more easily.
Harris returns to JPMorgan after previous roles at the bank and at Goldman Sachs, where he worked on tokenization efforts. He said previous waves of experimentation fell short due to immature technology and unclear regulations.
“The technology is now fit for purpose,” he said, adding that “previously there was no regulation at the corporate level.”
Before rejoining JPMorgan, Harris spent about a year and a half building Arda, a platform aimed at making real estate assets programmable and easier to trade.
He said during the panel that he now sees the industry approaching a turning point. “Now [is the] best time in history to look at real assets,” he said.
His appointment comes as major banks are increasing their investments in blockchain infrastructure, betting that faster settlement systems and tokenized assets could reshape the way the global financial industry works.