Digital Bytes 7th January 2026
A weekly review of who, how, why and where blockchains and digital assets are being used globally in various industries.
Digital intangibles: the next multi-trillion dollar asset class nobody’s pricing correctly - the modern economy is already dominated by intangible assets, intellectual property, algorithms, attention, reputation and data, yet financial markets continue to misprice them due to opaque ownership, limited liquidity and weak pricing signals. This article explores how tokenisation transforms digital intangibles into programmable, divisible and investable assets. It concludes that blockchain-based representation will unlock a new multi-trillion-dollar asset class by making the true drivers of economic value legible to capital markets.
The tokenisation paradox: why democratisation risks digitising illiquidity - asset tokenisation has lowered entry barriers to private markets, but it has not yet solved illiquidity. Whilst investors can now access private credit and equity with smaller tickets, secondary trading remains thin - constrained by regulation and asset structure. For investors, tokenisation improves access and transparency, not exit. Until regulated secondary markets and compliant liquidity mechanisms mature, tokens risk digitising long-term lockups rather than delivering the promised liquidity premium.
How the US and UK plan to rule the age of programmable markets - the Bessent-Reeves taskforce is ultimately a bet that the Anglo‑American axis can write the operating system for programmable markets before others do. If Washington and London manage to align stablecoin rules, tokenisation regimes and wholesale settlement standards, they will entrench dollar–sterling capital markets at the heart of on‑chain finance and give global institutions a credible path out of today’s fragmented pilots. For investors, the prize is a deeper, more diversified universe of tokenised cash, credit and equity instruments that settle at machine speed, without having to navigate incompatible regulatory silos on either side of the Atlantic.
When game worlds think for themselves: how AI agents and Web3 are re-writing play, work and value - online gaming is mutating from entertainment into a self-organising digital economy. AI agents now design worlds, manage resources and shape narratives in real time, while Web3 anchors ownership, governance and value on chain. The impact is profound: games become laboratories for autonomous markets, digital labour and creator economies. For players, this blurs play and work; for platforms, it turns gaming into infrastructure for future digital societies.
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