"Token" is a technical word, not a legal one. A digital token can record a direct ownership interest, a share in a company, the rights arising from a debt instrument, or a narrower economic entitlement. What it records in any given operation is defined exclusively by the transaction documentation. That is why the same word can describe profoundly different investment positions, with different rights, different protections and different risks. Investors who hold that distinction firmly have an advantage in the entire digital-assets conversation.
Structure one: direct fractional co-ownership
For selected physical assets, the token records a documented, undivided share of the asset itself. There is no intermediate vehicle: co-ownership is contractual between co-owners, the asset sits with a professional custodian under insurance at appraised value, and the digital record administers who holds what. The holder's rights — a proportional share of net sale proceeds, information rights, and voting on decisions defined in the documentation — are set out in the co-ownership agreement. If one thousand participations represent a work valued at one hundred thousand euros, each participation represents a documented one-thousandth of that specific work. This is the structure behind Real Assets, and the one most people have in mind when they discuss tokenizing real-world assets.
Structure two: shares of a dedicated SPV
In a club deal, investors do not co-own the underlying asset. They subscribe shares or quotas of a special-purpose vehicle created for one identified operation — an income property, an infrastructure project, a private company — and the vehicle owns the investment. The token records that corporate participation, while the SPV's official shareholder register remains the legal proof of title and prevails in any divergence. Rights, economics and governance live in the vehicle's constitutional documents. The distinction matters at exit: a co-owner is paid from the sale of an object, a shareholder through the corporate waterfall of a vehicle. Our club-deal anatomy and the SPV guide unpack this further.
Structure three: notes of a securitisation compartment
A third family involves neither co-ownership nor shareholding. Investors subscribe notes issued by a segregated compartment of a securitisation vehicle, and hold the position of a noteholder, with rights defined by the terms and conditions of the notes and by the compartment's ring-fenced structure. No description on a website can substitute for that documentation, which is why access to such strategies is reserved to professional investors and materials are provided on request.
The practical rule
Never infer rights from the word "token". Read what is owned, by whom, subject to which restrictions, with which economic entitlements, and through which register. At Altherum each opportunity is presented with dedicated documentation that answers exactly those questions.