Fireblocks CSO Stephen Richardson weighs in on token use cases at Money20/20 USA

Tokens were supposed to make finance simpler. At Money20/20 USA, a panel of practitioners made the case that the real picture is more complicated. Stephen Richardson of Fireblocks joined Debbie Gamble of Interac and Elizabeth St.-Onge of TD Bank to sort through a crowded field of token formats. Their shared conclusion: each format solves one problem and tends to create a fresh one. A panel built around a very specific question The session ran under a title that doubled as a warning label: “There’s Dozens of Token Types: Defining Which One for What Use Case.” It took place at Money20/20 USA 2026, held October 18-21 in Las Vegas. The discussion centered on three areas where token formats are being put to work: payments, identity management, and asset management. In each case, the panelists weighed what a given format fixes against what it breaks. The trade-offs nobody puts on the brochure The panel flagged several of the new complications that come with tokenization. Privacy concerns came up, along with subscription friction and interoperability problems. Privacy is the obvious one. A format designed for transparency and easy auditing can expose more information than a customer or a ...