Asset tokenization and property regimes in common law and civil law jurisdictions

Asset tokenization is now transforming the legal understanding of ownership and property rights. Tokenization goes far beyond simple digitisation, which merely turns physical documents into electronic form, as it creates digital tokens that can represent and transfer legal rights within programmable digital systems such as distributed ledger technology. These tokens give digital assets legal meaning and connect them to ownership or control, thus granting them enforceable rights within their framework. With this progress, property law must evolve. In this paper, we explore how tokenization interacts with property regimes across legal traditions and jurisdictions. We study how different types of tokenization relate to the legal doctrines of ownership, possession, and control across major jurisdictions. Through a comparative doctrinal analysis, we examine how common law traditions recognise digital control as a form of ownership, while civil law counterparts provide regulatory clarity through their frameworks, while retaining traditional property structures. The paper concludes that for tokenized assets to have full legal effect, blockchain control must be integrated with national property registries to align digital and legal recognition of ownership.