a16z: 7 Charts to Help You Understand the Tokenization Boom

Author: Robert Hackett, a16z crypto special editor; Source: a16z crypto; Translation: Shaw, Golden Finance

Tokenized Asset Market—also commonly referred to as the Real World Asset (RWA) Market— exceeded $30 billion last month, remaining around $34 billion thereafter, excluding stablecoins. This scale is comparable to a regional bank or top university endowment fund, already having tangible market influence, but still relatively small compared to the global financial system.

By mid-2024, the tokenized asset market size was less than $3 billion. Since then, industry growth has sharply accelerated: The US GENIUS Act was enacted, stablecoin regulatory rules became clearer; institutional-grade on-chain infrastructure matured; many financial institutions completed blockchain pilots and officially launched commercial systems. Although stablecoins are not included in this statistic, they greatly simplified on-chain payments and settlement processes, supporting industry growth.

Driven by multiple factors, the market size of tokenized assets has surged tenfold in less than two years.

Tokenization Sparks Explosive Growth

U.S. Treasury assets are the core driver behind the recent market expansion.

Their appeal is straightforward: investors can hold these familiar income-generating assets efficiently and flexibly in native digital form; institutions can leverage this model to improve settlement and collateral asset circulation, better connecting to digital financial markets.

For crypto investors, Treasury tokenization products can activate idle stablecoins and earn yields from traditional money markets. Asset management giants like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have responded swiftly to market demand, creating a market worth billions of dollars around this category.

The growth rates of various tokenized assets vary widely, reflecting both the difficulty of bringing different assets on-chain and the varying market acceptance of early products.

Asset-backed credit, including tokenized home equity credit lines and lending vault tokens, reached a market value of over $1 billion in just 185 days since the first on-chain transaction, far outpacing all other tokenized asset categories.

Specialized financial assets rank second in growth, including tokenized reinsurance contracts, Bitcoin mining bonds, and others, surpassing $1 billion in less than two years.

Venture capital assets grow the slowest, taking over seven years to reach $1 billion; Active strategy assets also take a similar amount of time. These assets are more complex in structure, have longer investment cycles, and face higher operational and regulatory challenges.

Government bonds and commodity tokenization have grown relatively quickly, surpassing $1 billion within two to three years, now becoming mainstream categories. Early 2024, these two categories nearly dominated the entire tokenized asset market.

Since 2024, markets for asset-backed credit, specialized financials, stocks, and active strategies have steadily increased their share, but industry concentration remains high. Currently, tokenized U.S. Treasuries and commodities together account for about two-thirds of the market.

Deep Analysis of the Tokenized Asset Market

Market concentration within the commodities sector is also extremely high: gold accounts for nearly all of it, with a tokenized scale of about $5 billion, while the total commodity token market is around $5.1 billion. Silver and other categories are tiny, totaling only $57.6 million, just 0.01%.

Gold is naturally well-suited for tokenization: it has a global standard, is easy to store, resistant to loss, and is traditionally traded as a rights certificate. Crypto investors have long favored gold assets; even before gold tokens appeared, Bitcoin was already dubbed “digital gold.” Products like Tether’s XAUT and Paxos’ PAXG transfer the established gold holding model onto blockchain systems, turning vault gold ownership certificates into on-chain tokens that can be stored in digital wallets.

Oil, agricultural products tokens, and emerging categories like energy and computing power have very low market shares and are still in early stages. Currently, the commodity token market is mainly dominated by gold.

The blockchain ecosystems supporting various tokenized assets are diverse. Ethereum, leveraging its DeFi and institutional application advantages, remains dominant, with related assets totaling $15.7 billion, slightly over half of the market share.

Other tokenized assets are distributed across multiple blockchains: BSC network with $4 billion, Solana with $2.2 billion, Stellar with $1.7 billion, and Bitcoin sidechain Liquid Network with $1.5 billion. XRP Ledger, ZKsync Era, and Arbitrum each have close to $1 billion.

Due to factors like transaction costs, liquidity, compliance requirements, and business partnerships, tokenized assets are not concentrated on a single chain but are gradually spreading across major blockchain ecosystems.

However, the most valuable aspect is not the market size but the actual application scenarios of these assets.

Most Tokenized Assets Have Not Yet Achieved Composability

Bonds are the largest category of tokenized assets, with a market value of $15.2 billion, but only about 5% (roughly $800 million) are used within decentralized finance protocols.

Precious metal tokens also have low utilization, with most assets stored only in on-chain accounts, not used as composable financial components for expansion, restructuring, or cross-asset linkage.

The performance of niche categories is quite different. Reinsurance tokens, with a market cap of only $362 million, have 84% of their assets invested in DeFi protocols, while private credit tokens have a 33% on-chain application rate.

This clear logic underpins the data: the categories with the highest DeFi usage are designed from the start to be compatible with on-chain composability, with protocols like Nexus Mutual and Maple Finance. In contrast, mainstream tokenized assets like Treasuries and gold primarily aim for convenient on-chain holding and transfer, without fundamentally changing their operational models.

This divergence reflects a deep segmentation in the tokenized asset market:** the native on-chain degree of various assets varies greatly.**

Some assets can circulate freely and be used across different chains; many others only use blockchain as a proof-of-ownership system, with limited transfer and composability capabilities. For example, data platform RWA.xyz classifies assets into distributed assets and certificate-based assets.

Most current so-called tokenization is essentially digital proofing: assets are merely recorded on-chain without unlocking their composable value. The core advantage of on-chain finance is composability, which can greatly expand financial service capabilities.

Other analyses measuring on-chain attributes of assets also reach similar conclusions. Pantera Capital’s token-native index, which assesses how well assets fit into the on-chain ecosystem, shows over 75% of assets are rated at the lowest level. In practice, these tokens mostly serve as digital certificates, with the underlying real assets still managed off-chain by intermediaries.

One type of asset is simply a digital replica on the chain, with an external shell; another deeply leverages blockchain’s unique features to operate natively on-chain. The gap between these two illustrates that the industry is still in its early stages.

The infrastructure and underlying assets to support portfolio applications are in place, but deep integration and practical implementation are just beginning.

Future Directions for Tokenized Assets

Industry forecasts vary, but there is a consensus on continued growth:

McKinsey’s baseline predicts that by 2030, the market will reach $2 trillion to $4 trillion. Ark Invest estimates it could grow to $11 trillion. BCG and Ripple forecast that by 2030, the market could hit $9.4 trillion, and by 2033, nearly $18.9 trillion. Standard Chartered projects over $30 trillion by 2034.

All mainstream forecasts indicate that, compared to the current roughly $30 billion market size, the industry could expand by a hundredfold. The main divergence lies in the scope of the statistical definitions.

The gap between $2 trillion and $30 trillion is not due to differing adoption speeds but mainly because of different definitions: which asset classes are included, whether stablecoins and deposits are counted, and how tokenization is defined. McKinsey mainly includes bonds, loans, funds, and stocks; Standard Chartered also includes commodities and trade finance; BCG and Ripple include deposits and stablecoins alongside traditional assets.

Despite methodological differences, all agree on the overall trend: the asset tokenization market will experience significant expansion.

Looking at the global financial scale, the current tokenized asset market remains tiny. The global bond market exceeds $140 trillion, but tokenized bonds are only about $15 billion, just 0.01%. The global circulating gold value is in the trillions, with tokenized gold around $5 billion, less than 0.02%. The total global stock market exceeds $100 trillion, with tokenized stocks about $1.5 billion, only 0.001%.

This emerging market is gradually taking shape. Assets with clear pricing, stable demand, and simple ownership structures—like government bonds, gold, and private credit—are the first to successfully convert on-chain and become popular categories.

Currently, tokenization has not fundamentally reshaped the assets themselves but has only changed their circulation and settlement methods. Deep integration with digital financial infrastructure is still in early stages. Most of the market remains at the digital proofing level, without truly enabling on-chain composability. Many assets, though operating on blockchain, cannot yet serve as programmable financial building blocks.

The industry will face greater challenges ahead: pushing more complex assets onto the chain and deeply integrating tokenized assets into an internet-native financial system with composability features.