Tokenized stocks risk repeating Wall Street’s 1960s ‘paper crisis,’ Fairmint CEO says

Fairmint CEO Joris Delanoue warns that the current trajectory of tokenized stocks risks replicating the 1960s Wall Street paper crisis due to a lack of unified standards. During that historical period, the rapid increase in trading volume overwhelmed manual record-keeping systems, leading to massive settlement failures and industry-wide instability. Delanoue argues that the modern tokenization landscape is becoming similarly fragmented, with various protocols and blockchains operating in silos that prevent seamless interoperability. Without a standardized framework for digital securities, the industry faces potential systemic bottlenecks as adoption scales. This fragmentation complicates the reconciliation of ownership records across disparate ledger systems, mirroring the inefficiencies of the pre-digital era. Addressing these technical hurdles is essential for tokenized assets to achieve the liquidity and reliability promised by blockchain technology. The warning highlights a critical need for industry-wide cooperation to establish common protocols before institutional volume reaches a breaking point.