How much is Harry Kane’s toe worth?

I’ve just created a platform to tokenize idols. Any idol and even bits and pieces related to them. You can tokenize Taylor Swift’s underwear; tokenize Rory McIlroy’s golfing glove; tokenize Ryan Reynolds Wrexham shirt; or even tokenize Harry Kane’s big toe. After all, any part of an idol is worth something to a fan, so if I’m idol then I can fractionalise anything, tokenize it and buy and sell it.

This is because a glove or shirt or even a part of the body has a value. For those who forgot, Taylor Swift’s legs were reportedly worth $40 million ten years ago. How much are they worth today, and does Travis Keloe know?

As can be seen, any item can be recorded and stored somewhere, and then you have what’s called fractionalisation. What is that? Well, it’s where you take a valuable asset, and divide it into pieces that become affordable investments. Think of taking bitcoin and buying 0.0001btc. Well, that’s what we can do today on blockchain ledgers. A more formal definition:

Fractionalisation is the process of dividing a single large asset into smaller, tradable units or "fractions" to allow multiple investors to own a portion of it, making expensive or otherwise inaccessible assets more affordable and increasing investment opportunities and market liquidity. This concept applies to various assets, from real estate and commodities to art and financial securities like stocks, and is increasingly powered by blockchain-based tokenisation for digital ownership.

The key to this today is that these are assets in whatever form, as long as it has value and, if you can buy a fraction of that asset as a token to trade, then people can and do. This is what the NFT craze was all about: buying a token that was unique and often related to an idol, celebrity or any other desirable asset.

So, I cannot afford Taylor Swift’s underwear but could get a fraction of owning one part of her stage costume. I cannot afford to buy Harry Kane – who could these days? – but maybe I could own a digital token of ownership of his toe nail. And yes, the idea sounds stupid, but it is happening.

As Azeem Khan points out on Forbes:

In 1997, David Bowie did something Wall Street hadn’t seen before. He securitized the future royalties of his first 25 albums, raising $55 million upfront in a deal now known as the “Bowie Bonds.” The proceeds let him buy back the rights to his music. By 2007, investors were paid in full and Bowie had regained control over his catalogue. It was a win-win. It made headlines at the time but didn’t spark a broader trend.

Now imagine if someone like Taylor Swift were to do the same thing today. Not through a traditional bond deal with a single insurance giant, but through tokenization. The difference isn’t just scale. It’s access. Tokenization would allow her to raise capital directly from fans, offer real ownership in her catalogue’s future, and tap into crypto-native financial rails that make it possible to trade, borrow against, or build on top of those assets in real time.

That’s not just a more efficient version of what Bowie did. It’s a fundamentally different model for how culture can be financed and owned.

This is happening. What is happening? Well, the toeknization of digital assets using ledger-based technologies that would allow anything to be represented, brought and sold digitally by anyone, anywhere. That would mainly be tokenized phyiscal assets, such as real estate, but tokenizing music is happening and owning a fraction of Rory McIlroy or Ryan Reynolds is reality if you know where to look. Just think of the craze there was for Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) during Covid … forgotten about those? Well, they’re back again and stronger than ever. Specifically celebrities are buying into meme coins like $TRUMP, so why couldn’t there be a £CHRISS coin tomorrow? And yes, if you pay enough, you could win my toenail clipping.

 

Post-thought:

As I write this, it makes me wonder if we are entring a digital Wild West where I could bet, through tokens, on someone’s life. Back in the day, people would take out insurance contracts on celebrities, effectively gambling that they might day in the near future, The fact this was happening created the life assurance industry where you have to have an ‘insurable interest’ in the person being insured. The insurable interest means a direct and clear relationship – father, mother, daughter, son – to the person bing insured. It is likely that tokenized fractionalisation of human body parts will become a legal minefield until the regulators catch up. After all, would you pay $20 million for one of Taylor’s legs?

 

More?

The Future of Finance is Fractional | Fidelity International Strategic Ventures