Former Goldman Sachs crypto head Oliver Harris, who has returned to the TradFi world as JPMorgan’s new blockchain chief, once said he believes tokenization alone will not solve one of finance’s core challenges, warning that putting assets on blockchain rails won’t 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 biggest narratives as Harris takes over Kinexys.
In a LinkedIn post on Tuesday, Harris said his focus will be on expanding the digital settlement infrastructure, advancing tokenization capabilities and strengthening partnerships across both public and private blockchain networks.
“The work is the foundation for the next era of market structure: how money, assets and information move on the chain,” he wrote.
During his panel last year, Harris also reflected on his own path through the industry, noting repeated attempts to bring tokenization into mainstream finance. “I guess I would call this my third loop of hell,” he said, referring to roles at JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and his startup Arda. He added that this time may be different given recent advances in technology and regulation.
His broader argument is that real change will come not from tokenizing individual assets, but from reworking the systems that support them. “I’m getting more interested in the global settlement layer, where you can merge money, assets and data into one software platform,” he said.
That shift could streamline how markets work. “You can basically rip out the back end of these established old industries and replace them with … blockchains,” he said, describing a future where markets run continuously and assets can more easily interact.
Harris returns to JPMorgan after previous roles at the bank and at Goldman Sachs, where he worked on tokenization efforts. He said previous waves of experiments fell short because of immature technology and unclear regulation.
“The technology is now fit for purpose,” he said, adding that “business quality regulations really weren’t there” before.
Before returning to 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 tipping point. “Now [is the] best time in history to look at real world assets,” he said.
His appointment comes as major banks ramp up investment in blockchain infrastructure, betting that faster settlement systems and tokenized assets could reshape how global finance works.
