tokenize

especially British, to·ken·ise

[toh-kuh-nahyz]

verb (used with object)

tokenized, tokenizing 

1. to hire, treat, or use (someone) as a symbol of inclusion or compliance with regulations, or to avoid the appearance of discrimination or prejudice.

   The company has been accused of tokenizing women and people of color in their advertising.

2. Linguistics.,  to separate (text) into discrete words, sequences, symbols, or other linguistic units.

   When working with a data set using natural language, it's often useful to tokenize the text into individual words.

3. Computers.,  to replace (sensitive or personal information, such as a bank account number) with a placeholder, usually a randomized string of characters having no meaningful value.

   The electronic wallet technology securely captures, tokenizes, and stores credit card information.

4. Digital Technology.,  to split (a tangible or intangible asset) into virtual tokens that are able to be sold or exchanged.

   Rather than selling a painting outright, the artist can now tokenize the product and offer digital shares of the painting.

   The startup hopes to tokenize movie stars, rock bands, and other celebrities, giving fans a unique opportunity to invest.

Other Word Forms

• tokenization noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of tokenize¹

First recorded in 1985–90; token ( def. ) + -ize ( def. )

Example Sentences

“Now, Wall Street is exploring how to tokenize stocks, bonds and even real estate,” he said, bringing traditional financial assets into the same programmable ecosystem.

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JPMorgan expects to tokenize additional alternative investment strategies, including private credit, real estate, and hedge funds, in the future.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

“We’re not talking about how quickly we’re going to tokenize every financial asset, and the opportunity we’re going to have to have a digital wallet and moving ETFs and other things though a digital wallet. I think that’s going to happen worldwide very rapidly, and I think most countries are ill-prepared for that, and underappreciate how technology is changing that, not unlike how technology is changing AI. It will be changing the technology around the plumbing of finance.”

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As in: My name is Alex, and I could tokenize myself by launching AlexCoin.

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"I hope people in computer science can figure out how can we tokenize cryptocurrencies in some way that can benefit global science," says Grzybowski.

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