What Do You Own? Tokenization’s Missing Half | Dr Ian Hunt | [EP. 330]
MoneyNeverSleeps · Nov 13, 2026 · 19:35
MoneyNeverSleeps · Nov 13, 2026 · 19:35
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Dr Ian Hunt spent around 40 years on the buy side and was the design authority behind FundAdminChain, the first distributed ledger-based funds platform to go live in the UK.
His new paper with Steve Whyman argues that tokenizing an existing asset changes how you own it and very little else: the same intermediaries, the same servicing, the same regulation.
As Ian puts it, “by changing the way you own something, you don’t change the thing.” The missing half is what you’re owed. Ian makes the case for building finance from two primitive tokens, title and entitlement, so products can execute themselves and blockchains only have to agree on two things.
Also in this one: why we built our own private stablecoin at FAC, why atomic settlement doesn’t have to mean instant, why most of the companies on the OKX and ICE tokenized stock list objected, and the composable investment specification Ian is now writing with Steve Whyman, Charlie Kerrigan, Rich Fox and Professor Sarah Green.
Connect with Ian:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ian-hunt-228880/
Read the paper:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?
Subscribe on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4F8uOLxiscYVWVGEfNxTnd
Chapters
0:00 Cold open
0:17 Intro: Ian Hunt and FundAdminChain
1:07 Cash on chain: the FAC private stablecoin
3:25 What stablecoins open up: atomic doesn’t mean instant
4:44 Stablecoins, tokenized deposits and the digital cash layer cake
5:55 OKX, ICE and why issuers are objecting
8:28 Apple is solvent, the token issuer goes bust
10:37 The paper with Steve Whyman: own vs owed
13:50 Title and entitlement, the two primitive tokens
15:01 Interoperability: agreeing on two things instead of many
16:24 Innovating without adding complexity
17:08 The composable spec, and who’s writing it
18:52 Wrap
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