Tokenization will not stall because the idea is weak. It will stall where trust changes hands.
In financial systems, the hardest part of the next wave is not issuance or settlement logic. It is designing the trust boundary around action, custody, and liability.
Working around regulated and cross-border systems changes how you hear these stories. The headline is usually about speed, rails, or new market structure. The real question is much more boring and much more expensive: who is allowed to do what, under which policy, with whose authority, and what happens when the automated path goes wrong?
That is where most "obvious future" narratives get delayed. The technology can be directionally right and still be operationally premature. In finance, adoption rarely fails first on thesis. It fails on trust choreography.
The future usually arrives at the point where somebody is finally willing to own the risk.