Tokenisation of Real‑World Assets: Efficiency Gains and Externalities Across the Asset Lifecycle

This master’s dissertation explores the tokenisation of real-world assets (RWAs) as a new stage in the development of financial market infrastructure. The dissertation contributes to extant research by showing that tokenised equity structures reduce temporal access and transferability frictions, but do not necessarily improve price efficiency, legal ownership, or liquidity integration. It begins by establishing the technological and institutional foundations of tokenisation, describing how digital tokens on programmable ledgers can represent assets and rights, how various tokenisation models differ, and how the current infrastructure is being developed. Building on this foundation, the dissertation presents an analytical framework to evaluate tokenisation across the asset lifecycle—issuance, exchange, servicing, and redemption. The framework is then applied to a selected case study of NVDAon token, a digital representation of NVIDIA stock issued by the ONDO Global Markets platform. The case reveals the impact of the hybrid tokenisation model, including its benefits and concerns.