Former Goldman Sachs cryptocurrency executive Oliver Harris, who has returned to the world of TradFi as JPMorgan’s new head of blockchain, once said he believes tokenization alone will not solve one of finance’s biggest challenges, warning 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 during a panel at Consensus Toronto last year as founder and CEO of Arda, a startup Harris worked on for a year and a half.
The comment underscores a more cautious view of one of the industry’s most important narratives as Harris acquires Kinexys.
In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Harris said his focus will be on expanding digital settlement infrastructure, improving tokenization capabilities, and strengthening partnerships on public and private blockchain networks.
“The work lays the foundation for the next era of market structure: how money, assets and information move on the chain,” he wrote.
During her panel last year, Harris also reflected on her own path through the industry, highlighting repeated attempts to bring tokenization to mainstream finance. “I guess I’d call it my third cycle of hell,” he said, referencing his positions at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and his startup Arda. He added that this time may be different given recent progress in technology and regulation.
Their broader argument is that real change will not come from tokenizing individual assets but from reworking the systems that support them. “I’m more interested in the global settlement layer, where you can merge money, assets and data into one software platform,” he said.
That change could simplify the way markets work. “You can basically rip off the back of these legacy industries and replace them with…blockchains,” he said, describing a future where markets function continuously and assets can interact more easily.
Harris returns to JPMorgan after holding 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 regulation.
“The technology is now fit for purpose,” he said, adding that “enterprise-level regulations didn’t really exist” before.
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 market.
He said during the panel that he now sees the industry approaching an inflection point. “Now [is the] “The best time in history to analyze real-world assets,” he said.
His appointment comes as big banks ramp up investment in blockchain infrastructure, betting that faster settlement systems and tokenized assets could reshape the way global finance works.
