From QT to QE – Liquidity’s Return and the Rise of Tokenized Assets

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Monetary cycles define eras of opportunity. For years, we lived under quantitative tightening. Liquidity was withdrawn, balance sheets were reduced and capital became expensive.

Central banks wanted restraint, and they got it. Risk appetite collapsed, valuations fell and growth assets – from venture capital to digital infrastructure – suffered.

Now the tide is turning. Inflation is cooling, credit stress is spreading and global growth is running out of momentum.

The conversation has shifted back to ‘quantitative easing.’ It is not official yet, but markets can already feel it coming.

You see it in falling yields, rising asset prices and investors once again searching for where the next expansion will begin.

QE (quantitative easing) is not just a technical adjustment. It changes the rhythm of capital. When liquidity floods back, money behaves differently.

Investors move faster, risk tolerance rises and the hunt for yield becomes relentless.

It is in this environment that tokenized assets stand to emerge as one of the defining beneficiaries of the next easing cycle.

The mechanics of a turning cycle

QT (quantitative tightening) slows everything down. It makes liquidity scarce and capital conservative.

QE does the opposite. Central banks expand their balance sheets, buying securities and injecting reserves into the system.

Yields fall, lending becomes cheaper and investors are forced to move further out on the risk curve.

The result is familiar – private credit expands, venture capital revives and alternative assets outperform.

But this time, the environment into which QE returns is very different.

The financial system is now digitized, global and technologically interoperable. Capital no longer flows only through traditional intermediaries.

It can move through programmable rails, settle instantly and reach investors directly.

Tokenized assets are not a concept waiting for validation – they are an infrastructure already running quietly beneath the surface of global finance.

Why tokenization fits the QE world

Liquidity rewards speed and transparency. When capital expands, the question is not where money will go – it is how fast it can get there.

Traditional systems were not built for that speed. They are layered with intermediaries, manual reconciliation and settlement processes measured in days.

Tokenization solves that friction. It turns ownership into code, settlement into a transaction and compliance into logic.

In a QE-driven market, that matters. Investors will demand efficiency, issuers will need agility and regulators will expect transparency.

Tokenized assets can be issued, distributed and settled in real time, with every action verifiable on-chain.

When liquidity accelerates, infrastructure becomes destiny – and tokenization, by design, is built for acceleration.

The search for yield and the broadening of access

Every easing cycle compresses safe yields and pushes investors toward alternatives.

When bonds yield little, capital moves into private credit, real estate and infrastructure, markets that have always offered higher returns but limited accessibility.

Tokenization changes that equation.

By fractionalizing ownership and embedding compliance, tokenized RWAs (real-world assets) make private markets investable at scale.

A credit fund in Singapore, a property portfolio in Spain or an infrastructure project in the Gulf can be tokenized, verified and accessed globally.

This broadens the investor base and channels liquidity into productive assets rather than speculative bubbles.

During QE, opportunity is not defined by scarcity but by access. Tokenization converts access into a product. It gives liquidity direction.

Regulation and institutional maturity

The next easing cycle will unfold in a far more mature regulatory landscape than any before it.

In the EU (European Union), MiFID II and MiCA together form a comprehensive framework for digital securities and tokenized instruments, giving legal certainty to issuers and investors.

In the United Arab Emirates, the VARA (Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority) has introduced clear licensing for custody, exchange and issuance, positioning Dubai as a global hub for compliant tokenization.

Singapore’s Monetary Authority, through the Securities and Futures Act and initiatives like Project Guardian, has created a supervised environment where banks experiment with tokenized bonds and funds.

The United States remains more fragmented, with oversight shared among the SEC, CFTC and FINRA. Yet progress is visible.

The Federal Reserve and DTCC are running pilots for tokenized Treasury settlement, and the policy debate around ‘digital asset securities’ shows growing institutional alignment.

The direction is clear. Global regulatory convergence is now a matter of timing, not ideology.

This maturing framework removes the greatest historical obstacle to adoption – uncertainty.

It gives institutions the confidence to engage safely, knowing that their participation sits within clear legal parameters.

Liquidity, accountability and the role of standards

Unlike previous QE cycles, this one arrives in a world where liquidity and accountability can coexist.

Blockchain-based verification and institutional governance create a safeguard that traditional systems never had.

Every asset can be traced to its origin, every transfer can be validated instantly and every investor can be verified through embedded compliance logic.

This evolution will be strengthened by emerging interoperability standards such as ERC 3643 and ERC 7943, which aim to harmonize the representation of compliant tokenized assets across blockchains.

These frameworks are not merely technical – they are policy instruments that enable global coordination.

They ensure that when capital flows across jurisdictions, it does so transparently and consistently, preserving both regulatory trust and market efficiency.

A new architecture for liquidity

QE will always be a monetary event, but this time it may also be an architectural one.

Liquidity no longer moves through the same channels it did a decade ago. It now encounters programmable infrastructure capable of handling speed, complexity and compliance simultaneously.

Tokenized assets sit at the intersection of that transformation. They turn policy into flow, liquidity into structure and transparency into value.

When capital floods markets again, the systems that can absorb it cleanly and verifiably will lead. Tokenization is one of those systems.

The last great wave of QE gave rise to digital assets and private equity as the dominant investment stories of their time.

The next one may belong to tokenization – not as a speculative trend, but as the infrastructure through which global liquidity finally becomes intelligent, transparent and borderless.

Edwin Mata is the CEO and co-founder of Brickken, a leading multi-chain tokenization platform that has already pioneered the tokenization of over $300 million in RWAs across 16 countries. Brickken was ranked number twenty-eight on Sifted’s ‘top 100 fastest-growing startups’ in France and Southern Europe 2025, proving that Web 3.0 infrastructure is no longer theoretical – it’s being built, adopted and deployed by real institutions.

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