Where Authority Resides: A Completion-Based Taxonomy of Tokenisation

Systems described as "tokenisation" perform fundamentally different institutional functions yet are analysed as though they denote a single economic transformation. This categorical confusion produces contradictory empirical findings across liquidity, settlement, risk, and governance in tokenised markets. This paper proposes a completion-based taxonomy that classifies tokenised arrangements according to when entitlement becomes operative and which institution determines that operability. Four distinct categories emerge. Referential tokenisation records exposure while completion depends on external redemption. Contractual tokenisation activates enforceable rights whose effect depends on legal or administrative action. Title tokenisation transfers recognised ownership within an institutional framework accepting the recorded state as authoritative. Atomic tokenisation completes transfer through system operation alone. The framework generates four testable predictions, each observable in current markets. Liquidity is inversely proportional to realworld finality embedded in the transfer. Systems where transfers do not complete entitlement cannot function as settled base assets. The visible reliability of ledgers masks invisible variability of authority, producing systematic risk misclassification. Governance without jurisdictional reach is coordination, not control. Token standards evolved by progressively internalising institutional functions, moving unintentionally from accounting to identification to validation to recognition. The atomic tokenisation of real-world assets remains elusive because authority structures remain external to records. The contribution is a single organising variable, the location of completion authority, that reconciles previously contradictory observations across these disciplines.