The internet’s greatest reboot is happening now.

The internet’s greatest reboot is happening now. How tokenized assets are reshaping digital economics…

Nine years ago, in a meeting room at Volvo Cars, Guy Fletcher and Thor Pettersen made arguments that seemed revolutionary at the time. They insisted that data was becoming the new oil, and that copyright owners needed sophisticated tools to control, monitor, and monetize their creative works in an increasingly digital world.

A white label solution, such as Volvo Music (powered by NIM white label services), will not only compete with and surpass the newly rolled-out Spotify and Apple Music in Volvo’s dashboard connection but also make the data collected from the cars extremely valuable to Volvo in future monetization efforts.

Today, their vision has not only materialized but evolved into the foundation for the most significant transformation of internet economics since the web’s inception.

The numbers tell the story.

The tokenized real-world asset market has expanded from $5 billion in 2022 to over $24 billion by June 2025 — a staggering 380% growth that makes it the cryptocurrency’s second-fastest-growing sector after stablecoins. But this isn’t just about crypto enthusiasm. Major institutions, including BlackRock, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo, have transitioned beyond experimentation to deploy production-scale tokenization platforms that meet institutional standards for security, compliance, and operational reliability.

When industry projections suggest that 10–30% of global assets could be tokenized by 2030–2034, we’re looking at a market opportunity that dwarfs cryptocurrency’s current $3 trillion market cap by more than 130 times. Traditional finance encompasses over $400 trillion in assets, and the infrastructure being built today is designed to bring that entire ecosystem onto blockchain rails.

The Tesla lesson! Data drives everything

Tesla’s recent robotaxi launch in Austin provides a perfect parallel to what’s happening in digital content economics. While everyone focuses on the $4.20 ride pricing that undercuts Waymo’s average of $22, the real strategy is data collection. Every trip generates operational data that feeds machine learning models, creating a competitive advantage that compounds over time.

The same principle applies to copyright and digital content. The new infrastructure treats every interaction with creative works as a data point that improves rights management, enhances royalty distribution, and creates new monetization opportunities. Just as Tesla leverages its existing fleet for data collection, content creators can now capture value from every use of their intellectual property across global digital platforms.

From vision to reality. The new copyright economy

What Fletcher and Pettersen envisioned in 2016 has become the Copyrighted-as-a-Service platform that operates today. This isn’t just technological upgrading — it’s a complete reimagining of how creative works generate value in digital environments.

The platform offers automated content fingerprinting and blockchain registration, creating immutable records of ownership and provenance. Advanced AI systems monitor billions of transactions in real time, detecting unauthorized usage with near-perfect accuracy. Smart contracts automate licensing and royalty distribution, ensuring creators receive instant compensation for every use of their content.

Perhaps most importantly, the system enables fractional ownership and tokenized royalty streams. Creators can unlock liquidity from their intellectual property while retaining creative control, accessing global investment markets that were previously available only to large institutional players.

The AI challenge and opportunity

The rise of generative AI has created unprecedented challenges for copyright protection, as vast datasets containing copyrighted material are used to train AI models without explicit consent or compensation. The new infrastructure addresses this head-on through comprehensive monitoring systems that track content usage across AI training datasets and generated outputs.

Advanced content fingerprinting can identify copyrighted material within training datasets and monitor AI outputs for protected elements. Smart contract systems enable automated licensing arrangements that facilitate legitimate AI applications while ensuring creators receive appropriate compensation. This transforms AI from a threat to copyright into a new revenue stream for content creators.

Learning from the best

The transformation of copyright management draws crucial insights from the world’s most successful sovereign wealth funds and data-driven industries. The Norwegian Oil Fund’s approach to transparency and accountability, Singapore’s GIC sophisticated investment strategies, and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s technology adoption provide templates for how copyright assets can be managed as institutional-grade investments.

The platform economy models developed by companies like Google, Amazon, and Uber demonstrate how technology can create network effects where increased participation improves outcomes for all stakeholders. These principles are being applied to copyright platforms to develop ecosystems that benefit creators, investors, and content consumers while reducing transaction costs and improving market efficiency.

The global impact

This transformation extends far beyond the creative industries. The infrastructure developed for tokenizing copyright assets provides the foundation for tokenizing real estate, commodities, private credit, and other asset classes that have historically been difficult to fractionalize or transfer efficiently.

Private credit has already emerged as the largest segment within tokenized real-world assets, reaching $14 billion as of June 2025. The integration of DeFi protocols with regulated tokenization frameworks creates yield amplification opportunities and secondary market liquidity that would be impossible within traditional financial infrastructure.

What does this mean for professionals?

For content creators, this represents a shift from being passive recipients of opaque royalty statements to being active participants in transparent, real-time ecosystems where every use is counted and every payment is automated. For investors, it provides access to asset classes that were previously restricted to institutional players, while offering the transparency and liquidity that characterize modern financial markets.

For technology platforms, it provides standardized licensing and payment systems that reduce operational complexity and compliance requirements while ensuring access to high-quality content through streamlined processes that reduce legal risks.

The reboot is now

The internet’s greatest reboot isn’t a future possibility — it’s happening now. The infrastructure, market dynamics, and institutional adoption that characterize the current ecosystem provide the foundation for continued expansion that will ultimately encompass the majority of global economic activity.

The journey from that 2016 Volvo meeting to today’s comprehensive ecosystem demonstrates how visionary thinking, persistent innovation, and strategic collaboration can create fundamental changes in how entire industries operate and create value. The principles established by Fletcher and Pettersen have become the foundation for a new economic paradigm that empowers creators while providing institutional investors with access to previously inaccessible asset classes.

As we stand at this inflection point, the question isn’t whether this transformation will continue — it’s how quickly we can adapt our thinking, our strategies, and our organizations to participate in the new economy that’s emerging. The infrastructure is built, the institutions are adopting, and the market is growing exponentially. The internet’s greatest reboot is underway, and it’s reshaping everything we thought we knew about digital value creation.

The future belongs to those who understand that in the digital economy, data is indeed the new oil, and the infrastructure to refine, distribute, and monetize that oil is finally here.