CZ says tokenization attracts FDI and backs it on all chains. Talks with governments remain talks — no deal surfaced, and no regulator has a framework for what he describes.
Alpha Score of 58 reflects moderate overall profile with strong momentum, weak value, moderate quality, moderate sentiment.
Changpeng Zhao posted on X this week that tokenizing assets – company stock, state-owned enterprises, “everything” – is one of the best ways for a country to raise money and attract foreign direct investment.
“Which country/company won’t want to sell their (tokenized) stocks to everyone in the world?” he wrote. He added that he backs tokenization on every blockchain even though that fragments liquidity.
This isn't a new argument. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Zhao said he was in talks with “probably a dozen governments” about tokenizing state-owned assets, naming Pakistan, Malaysia and Kyrgyzstan as examples. In February, on a Binance Square AMA, he expanded the list to include gold, rare earth minerals and water as assets governments could tokenize to finance infrastructure.
What exists so far is talks. No deal has surfaced publicly.
Atkins offers rules Zhao can't use
The regulatory backdrop Zhao's pitch depends on has moved. SEC chair Paul Atkins, testifying before the Senate Banking Committee in May, laid out a framework for crypto regulation that includes special-purpose broker-dealers, custody rule exemptions, and a path for tokenized securities issued by U.S. companies. He described the approach as “common-sense regulation: minimum effective dose, maximum freedom to build, and durable clarity under existing law.”
None of that reaches what Zhao is pitching. Every rule Atkins described is written for U.S.-based token issuers or companies already trading on U.S. public markets. A government tokenizing a state-owned refinery or a sovereign bond to sell to investors abroad sits outside all of them, in scale and in jurisdiction.
The closest real analog is Citi, not a state
In June, Citigroup launched Digital Depositary Receipts, tokenized shares of private companies, with its first transaction going to portfolio company Kaleido. Citi describes the product as reaching “global issuers and investors.” That is a bank tokenizing shares of a company it already banks, not a state selling stakes in its own assets to foreign buyers – the specific mechanism Zhao keeps describing.
No regulator anywhere has published a framework built for a state to tokenize its own assets and sell them to foreign investors. Zhao says the talks with governments are ongoing. None has produced a named deal.
Prepared with AlphaScala editorial tooling from the source reporting linked above. Indexable analysis may include a cited Alpha Score value. Publishing checks screen each story before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.