This blog is a preview of our forthcoming report, “The New Rails: How Digital Assets Are Reshaping the Foundations of Finance.” Reserve your copy!Summary
The tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market is growing rapidly, with institutional asset categories such as asset-backed credit leading this growth and reaching $1 billion in market value faster than retail categories, such as commodities and stocks.
RWAs are a key on-chain asset class for new ecosystem entrants. Ethereum wallet data show a spike in addresses created specifically to hold tokenized assets throughout late 2025 and early 2026. For this cohort of users, RWAs are the reason to come on-chain.
These purpose-built wallets typically hold institutional-grade assets like specialty finance (which includes tokenized private funds), while retail categories like commodities see broader participation from older crypto-native addresses.
While the trade volume correlation between tokenized gold and real gold (GLD) is trending upward, it still lags behind traditional proxies like gold miners (GDX). This suggests that, in terms of volume, on-chain trading patterns do not yet track traditional paper markets as closely as one might expect.
