The market for tokenized assets — what others sometimes call “real-world” assets (RWAs) — crossed $30 billion last month. It has since stayed above that level near $34 billion. (And that’s excluding stablecoins.) The market is roughly the size of a regional bank or an elite university endowment; it’s large enough to have an impact, but still tiny relative to all global finance.
As recently as mid-2024, the tokenized assets market amounted to less than $3 billion. Then things accelerated: The GENIUS Act brought clearer stablecoin regulation to the U.S.; institutional onchain infrastructure matured; and a wave of financial institutions moved from blockchain pilots to production systems at roughly the same time. (Stablecoins, though excluded here, fueled growth by making onchain payments and settlement much easier.)
Amid these developments, the market for tokenized assets grew 10x in under two years.
The tokenization take-off
U.S. Treasury debt has driven most of the market’s recent growth.
