Trade Finance Is Finally Ready for the Onchain Era
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For years, legal uncertainty held trade finance back from going digital. That barrier is rapidly disappearing. Global frameworks like the UN’s Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records and national laws such as the UK’s Electronic Trade Documents Act now give digital trade instruments full legal recognition. In the US, the 2025 GENIUS Act has established clear standards for regulated stablecoins, enabling compliant onchain settlement for real-world transactions.Tokenization has already proven itself with assets like tokenized treasuries and funds, yet trade finance remains largely untouched despite dwarfing many other asset classes in size. The infrastructure, regulation, and institutional interest are finally converging. As digitized trade data meets compliant digital dollars and institutional DeFi platforms, trade finance is poised to become the next major real-world market to move onchain — not as an experiment, but as a system-wide upgrade.
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kinda crazy that tokenized treasuries took off before trade finance, even tho trade is way bigger