Last week I made a pit stop at the Dubai Fintech Summit—and from the outset it was clear: Tokenization isn’t a concept anymore. It’s a playbook. Dubai isn’t testing the waters. It’s diving in headfirst—staking its claim as the global hub for tokenized finance. The value prop? Not just regulatory clarity or cool tech—but a convergence between market demand and technical architecture. Here’s the curveball: while the West hones in on tokenized stocks and bonds, real estate is the alpha use case in Dubai. High value, illiquid, universally in demand—and totally in sync with the region’s economic identity. Tokenizing property isn’t just practical. It’s personal. The big unlock? Trust. As RWAs go on-chain, trust doesn’t come from legal wrappers—it comes from real-time verification, bulletproof data, and systems that work seamlessly from front-end to finality. This isn’t DeFi forced into TradFi rails. This is rewriting the rails from scratch—powered by local economic drivers and momentum. And hypercharged with global ambition. And the lesson keeps repeating: Infra > Hype. If your tokenized product doesn’t run on user-friendly, secure, and interoperable rails? It’s dead on arrival. Institutional or retail, no one wants friction. Zooming out, the UAE is crafting something unusual: a multi-regulator ecosystem that invites innovation and competes for market share—and trust. The vision is big, and not without risk, but the groundwork is being laid. If tokenization is the next leap in global finance, Dubai may well be where it takes off.