Here's how Investopedia defines a financial asset:
A financial asset is a liquid asset that gets its value from a contractual right or ownership claim. Cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and bank deposits are all are examples of financial assets. Unlike land, property, commodities, or other tangible physical assets, financial assets do not necessarily have inherent physical worth or even a physical form. Rather, their value reflects factors of supply and demand in the marketplace in which they trade, as well as the degree of risk they carry.
By this definition, Data itself does not qualify as a financial asset. The right to access (own and/or use) Data in a tradable instrument, however, does qualify as a financial asset.
When we say Data is a financial asset, we imply that Data Access (ownership, use) is being converted into a liquid, tradable instrument. By the same token (!), packaged Data Access is the true asset class, not Data by itself. In the following articles in this series, I will use "Data Access" (or Ownership, or Monetization) instead of simply using "Data" to emphasize the difference.
As the definition above indicates, there are a number of ways in which financial assets can be packaged. I'll focus on the two likeliest candidates - Shares and Web3 tokens in the next article.