Global Tokenization Market Overview 2026: $18.9 Billion and Accelerating

Market Size: Where We Are

The tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market reached $18.9 billion in aggregate value in early 2025, according to data from RWA.xyz and cross-referenced with DefiLlama and publicly disclosed institutional figures. This represents a market that has grown from effectively zero in 2018 — when the first institutional tokenized asset programs were announced — to a category that commands serious attention from the world’s largest asset managers, banks, and financial infrastructure providers.

The $18.9 billion figure covers tokenized assets across all chains and all asset classes, including tokenized US Treasury products, tokenized private credit, tokenized real estate, tokenized funds, and tokenized commodities. It excludes stablecoins (which are tokenized cash, not tokenized RWAs in the investment sense) and excludes utility tokens and crypto-native assets.

The composition of this $18.9 billion is instructive. It is heavily dominated by a single asset class — US Treasuries — and by a small number of institutional issuers. Diversification by asset class and by issuer represents the next phase of market development.

Market by Asset Class

Tokenized US Treasuries: $5.8 Billion

The tokenized US Treasury segment is the most developed, most liquid, and most institutionally credible segment of the tokenized RWA market. As of mid-2025, tokenized US Treasury products had reached $5.8 billion in aggregate AUM, distributed across a small number of dominant issuers.

The growth of this segment has been driven by a structural demand driver that did not exist in 2020: DeFi protocols seeking yield-bearing, dollar-denominated collateral. When short-term US Treasury yields rose to 5%+ in 2022–2024, on-chain protocols needed a way for their participants to access that yield without exiting the crypto ecosystem. Tokenized Treasuries provided the answer.

BlackRock’s BUIDL ($1.7 billion), Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX ($420 million), Ondo Finance’s OUSG and USDY ($500 million+), and a growing number of smaller programs collectively account for the segment’s current scale. See the detailed BlackRock BUIDL analysis.

Tokenized Private Credit: $4.2 Billion

Tokenized private credit is the second-largest RWA segment. This category includes tokenized loan receivables, tokenized trade finance instruments, and tokenized SME credit facilities — primarily originated in emerging markets and distributed to DeFi lenders through platforms such as Centrifuge, Maple Finance, and Goldfinch.

The appeal of tokenized private credit for DeFi investors is straightforward: yields of 10–18% on emerging market credit, with on-chain transparency of the collateral pool and automated waterfall payments via smart contract.

The compliance challenges in this segment are significant: originator due diligence, credit underwriting assessment, concentration risk, and the legal enforceability of tokenized loan assignments across multiple jurisdictions. These have constrained institutional adoption relative to the simpler Treasury segment.

Tokenized Real Estate: $1.5 Billion

Tokenized real estate has been slower to scale than either Treasuries or private credit, despite being the most frequently cited use case for tokenization in early industry discourse. The constraint is legal: in most jurisdictions, real estate ownership rights are recorded in government land registries that do not recognize blockchain-based ownership records. Tokenization of real estate therefore requires either an SPV structure (where the token represents equity in an entity that owns the property, not the property itself) or a jurisdiction with DLT-compatible property law.

The SPV structure is legally workable but introduces complexity. The investor’s ultimate rights depend on the enforceability of the equity interest in the SPV and the quality of the documentation governing that interest.

Tokenized Funds: $1.8 Billion

Tokenized funds — fund interests represented as digital securities on a blockchain — have seen growing issuance from regulated fund managers in Luxembourg, Ireland, and Singapore. The Luxembourg LFF (Limited Partnership Fund) and the RAIF (Reserved Alternative Investment Fund) have both been used as vehicles for tokenized fund issuance.

Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX is a SEC-registered money market fund that uses Stellar and Polygon as record-keeping layers for shareholder accounts. This is the most prominent example of a fully regulated, registered fund using blockchain as an infrastructure layer for transfer agency functions.

Tokenized Commodities: $0.6 Billion

Gold tokenization (Paxos Gold, Tether Gold) and other commodity tokenization programs collectively represent approximately $600 million. Gold tokenization has found a stable market among investors seeking physical gold exposure without custody costs, but the segment has not grown proportionally to the broader RWA market.

The 2030 Projections: $4 Trillion or $16 Trillion?

Two authoritative projections bracket the range of institutional forecasts for the tokenized RWA market by 2030:

McKinsey & Company (base case): $4 trillion. McKinsey’s 2024 analysis projects that tokenization will grow to $4 trillion by 2030 in a base case scenario that assumes continued regulatory progress, institutional adoption, and resolution of the primary infrastructure gaps (custody, interoperability, legal enforceability). McKinsey’s more optimistic scenario reaches $8 trillion.

Boston Consulting Group (upper estimate): $16 trillion. BCG’s projection assumes a more rapid regulatory resolution, greater institutional adoption in Asia (particularly India and Southeast Asia), and earlier resolution of the cross-chain interoperability problem. BCG’s lower estimate is $4–5 trillion, consistent with McKinsey.

The gap between the two projections reflects genuine uncertainty about three variables: how quickly regulatory frameworks in major jurisdictions provide sufficient certainty for large-scale institutional capital deployment; whether interoperable settlement infrastructure (cross-chain or multi-chain) develops to the point where institutional investors do not face blockchain-specific concentration risk; and whether the demand for tokenized assets from DeFi protocols and on-chain institutional investors grows proportionally to supply.

What Is Driving Growth

Regulatory clarity: MiCA’s full application in December 2024 removed the most significant regulatory uncertainty for EU market participants. VARA’s mature framework in Dubai provides a clear operational regime for the Middle Eastern market. Singapore MAS’s Project Guardian has demonstrated institutional willingness to engage with tokenization in a supervised environment.

Institutional infrastructure: The emergence of regulated institutional custody for digital assets — from Fireblocks (which processes $6 trillion+ annually), Anchorage Digital (the first federally chartered digital asset bank), and BitGo (which provides custody for multiple BUIDL-related programs) — removes the operational barrier that previously prevented large institutions from holding tokenized assets on-chain.

Securitize’s role: Securitize has emerged as the dominant transfer agent and issuance platform for institutional tokenized securities in the US. Its role in BlackRock BUIDL, Hamilton Lane funds, KKR funds, and multiple other institutional programs demonstrates that a compliant, regulatory-grade issuance infrastructure exists for US and non-US issuers.

DeFi RWA demand: DeFi protocols including Aave, Compound, and MakerDAO (now Sky) have actively incorporated tokenized RWAs as collateral assets. MakerDAO’s allocation to tokenized US Treasuries and other RWAs exceeded $2 billion at peak, providing a structural demand source that has partially driven the Treasury tokenization surge.

Yield environment: The 2022–2024 interest rate cycle created a temporary but powerful incentive for on-chain yield-seeking. When money market yields exceed 5%, the cost of holding non-yielding stablecoins on-chain becomes obvious, and tokenized Treasuries offer a credible on-chain yield alternative.

Barriers to Continued Growth

Custody risk and self-custody uncertainty: Institutional investors require custodians with clear legal frameworks governing asset segregation in insolvency. For tokenized assets, the legal position in most jurisdictions remains uncertain: does the token holder have a direct property right in the underlying asset, or a contractual right against the issuer? This distinction matters enormously in an insolvency scenario.

Cross-chain interoperability: Tokenized assets issued on Ethereum are not natively transferable to Solana or Avalanche. The lack of interoperability creates fragmentation — liquidity is siloed within each blockchain’s ecosystem rather than aggregating into a single deep pool. Cross-chain bridge technology exists but introduces additional smart contract risk.

Liquidity fragmentation: Even within a single blockchain, tokenized asset markets lack secondary market depth. The secondary market for most tokenized RWAs outside of Treasuries is thin or non-existent. Investors who tokenize private credit or real estate face the same liquidity constraints as traditional investors — the token wrapper does not create liquidity where the underlying asset has none.

Legal uncertainty in emerging markets: The most attractive yield opportunities in tokenized private credit involve loans to emerging market borrowers. The enforceability of tokenized loan documentation, the priority of the token holders’ claim in foreign insolvencies, and the cross-border regulatory treatment of tokenized credit instruments remain legally uncertain in most emerging market jurisdictions.

Wholesale vs. retail access: Most institutional tokenization programs are restricted to professional or qualified investors (Reg D in the US, per se professional clients in the EU). Mass retail tokenization requires either a public offering (with full prospectus and ongoing reporting obligations) or a regulatory innovation that permits retail-level access to tokenized securities without public offering requirements. Neither has been broadly achieved as of 2026.

Outlook: Which Segments and Jurisdictions Will Win

Fastest-growing segment (2026–2028): Tokenized money market funds and short-duration fixed income. The infrastructure for this segment is proven (BUIDL, FOBXX), regulatory frameworks exist (SEC-registered funds, MiCA CASP), and institutional demand is structural (DeFi collateral, on-chain treasury management). AUM in this segment is likely to reach $50–100 billion by 2028.

Highest potential (2028–2030): Tokenized private markets (private equity, private credit, infrastructure debt). The illiquidity premium in these markets is real; tokenization that creates genuine secondary market liquidity would capture significant institutional capital. The constraint is secondary market development, which requires regulatory certainty around who can operate a tokenized securities secondary market in each jurisdiction.

Jurisdictions positioned to lead: The EU (MiCA passporting for 27 states), Singapore (MAS Project Guardian institutional credibility), and Dubai (VARA framework, regional capital access) are best positioned. The US remains constrained by regulatory uncertainty (SEC’s ongoing classification disputes), but US-domiciled issuers will continue to use offshore vehicles for non-US distribution.

Related Resources

• BlackRock BUIDL: Detailed Analysis
• Institutional Tokenization Adoption Tracker
• EU MiCA CASP License: The Investor Angle
• Regulatory Benchmarks
• Jurisdiction Comparison