Tokenization 101
Build vs Buy
Honest tradeoffs for institutions choosing between white-label platforms and custom token layers.
Buy when the bottleneck is regulatory plumbing: KYC orchestration, transfer-agent or registrar records, investor portals, corporate actions. White-label delivers in weeks at roughly $10K-50K setup plus SaaS/bps fees, and in the US you practically need a partner holding TA/BD/ATS registrations, since acquiring your own takes 12-18+ months.
Build when tokenization is the product: custom compliance logic, DeFi composability, chain choice, margin control. Open standards + audited libraries + an audit ($50K-500K depending on scope).
The common 2026 middle path: build the token layer on open standards for control, buy the regulated-entity layer (custody, transfer agent, oracle data). An audit de-risks code, not licensure.
Lock-in warning: proprietary registries (e.g. DS Protocol) are harder to migrate off than open-registry standards like ERC-3643.