Oliver Harris, a former Goldman Sachs crypto head who returned to the world of TradFi as JPMorgan’s new blockchain chief, once said he believed tokenization alone would not solve one of finance’s main challenges, warning that putting assets on the blockchain rails did not automatically make them easier to trade.
“Tokenization is not the same as liquidity,” Harris, who will lead JPM’s Kinexys division, said on a panel at Consensus Toronto last year as founder and CEO of Arda, a startup Harris worked on for a year and a half.
This comment underscores a more cautious view of one of the industry’s biggest narratives as Harris takes over Kinexys.
In a post on LinkedIn on Tuesday, Harris said he would focus on expanding digital settlement infrastructure, improving tokenization capabilities, and strengthening partnerships between public and private blockchain networks.
“This work forms the foundation for the next era of market structure: how money, assets, and information flow on-chain,” he wrote.
During his panel last year, Harris also reflected on his own journey in the industry, highlighting the repeated attempts to introduce tokenization into traditional finance. “I think I would call this my third loop of hell,” he said, referring to his roles at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and his startup Arda. He added that this time could be different given recent technological and regulatory advancements.
His broader argument is that real change will come not from tokenizing individual assets but from overhauling 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.
This change could streamline the functioning of markets. “Basically, you can remove the background of these traditional industries and replace them with…blockchains,” he said, describing a future where markets operate 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 had failed due to immature technology and unclear regulations.
“Technology is now fit for purpose,” he said, adding that “enterprise-level regulations didn’t really exist” before.
Before joining 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-world assets,” he said.
His appointment comes as big banks increase their investments in blockchain infrastructure, betting that faster settlement systems and tokenized assets could reshape the way global finance works.
