Tokenization and asset pricing: expanding financial observability of real assets an application to energy infrastructure in Vaca Muerta

Standard asset pricing theory defines the market portfolio as the aggregation of all risky assets in the economy. In practice, however, empirical implementations of models such as the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) rely almost exclusively on publicly traded equities and, to a lesser extent, corporate debt. As a result, a large set of economically relevant assets—particularly real estate, infrastructure, and physical capital—remain central to production and wealth accumulation but are largely absent from the observable and tradable asset set on which empirical asset pricing is based. This paper argues that the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) has the potential to narrow the gap between theoretical asset pricing frameworks and financial market practice by expanding financial observability rather than by altering underlying pricing theory. While prevailing regulatory approaches correctly emphasize that tokenization does not create new securities in a legal sense, we show that, from a financial perspective, the digital representation and economic fragmentation of previously indivisible and illiquid assets may alter their functional role within the asset space. Tokenization can enable transferability, measurement, and price discovery for payoff streams that were previously non-transactable, thereby expanding the empirically observable set of risky assets. Building on contingent claims theory, this work clarifies that tokenization does not create new states of nature nor mechanically complete markets. Instead, it may make previously unobservable or untradeable payoff dimensions financially observable, expanding the span of traded payoffs without implying full market completeness. When tokenized instruments are designed to link cash flows to operational or physical performance variables, they may introduce payoff vectors not spanned by traditional equity or debt claims, thereby relaxing—though not eliminating—market incompleteness. The paper illustrates these mechanisms through the case of energy infrastructure financing in Vaca Muerta, Argentina, where investors seeking passive exposure to sectoral growth have historically been limited to equity or debt issued by a small number of integrated operators. We argue that asset-backed, tokenized instruments linked to productive infrastructure can function as more direct financial proxies for real asset growth, complementing existing securities without displacing established regulatory frameworks.