Reclaiming power: Tokenization platforms and incumbency in global finance

This paper examines the rise of tokenization platforms as strategic instruments through which incumbent banks reassert power within the post-crisis financial system. Challenging dominant accounts of platform capitalism that emphasize disruption, data extraction, and/or ecosystem expansion, it argues that bank-led tokenization platforms, developed by institutions such as UBS, JPMorgan, HSBC, and Citi, constitute a distinct modality of platform power. Rather than dis-intermediating finance, these platforms operate through infrastructural embedding and regulatory compliance, offering other institutions more efficient, lower-friction ways to operate in critical financial segments. This enables banks to reorganize balance sheet operations and reclaim strategic centrality in private credit, repo markets, and asset management, responding to regulatory pressures and competition from non-bank financial actors. In doing so, this paper advances a political economy account of tokenization platforms that move beyond existing theories of platform power, highlighting infrastructural efficiency and reconfiguration as central mechanisms of contemporary financial authority.