Tokenization Leaves the Laboratory: Wall Street Moves Assets to Blockchain

Tokenization of assets has been one of those ideas that looked great in bank presentations for years, but much worse in real statistics. The market was supposed to be worth trillions of dollars, yet most projects remained pilot programs without liquidity, users, and a common settlement infrastructure.

However, in 2026, the situation begins to change. Not because millions of investors suddenly buy digital shares in real estate. Much more importantly, tokenization is now being handled by institutions responsible for the actual functioning of capital markets: BlackRock, JPMorgan, Nasdaq, Goldman Sachs, Vanguard, DTCC, and the largest custodial banks.

The most significant signal appeared on July 15. DTCC, the institution at the center of the U.S. post-trade infrastructure, conducted real transactions using tokenized securities held in DTC. Over 30 firms participated in the initiative, and full service launch is scheduled for October.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• The Market Has Grown, But Still Remains Small
• BlackRock Found Its First Practical Application
• The Most Important Breakthrough Happened Outside the Cryptocurrency Market
• Banks Are Not Waiting for a Full Revolution
• From $36 Billion to Several Trillion Dollars?
• Not Everyone Will Benefit from Tokenization

Key Takeaways

• The value of RWA assets distributed on blockchains, excluding stablecoins, is currently around $36.7 billion.
• Tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds account for about $15.9 billion of this market.
• BlackRock's BUIDL fund has amassed assets worth nearly $2 billion.
• DTCC has tested, in a real environment, transactions including repos, stock trading, securities lending, and collateral transfers.
• Citi forecasts that the value of tokenized financial assets could rise to $5.5 trillion by 2030, but admits that the market is still at a very early stage of development.

The Market Has Grown, But Still Remains Small

According to data from RWA.xyz, the value of assets distributed on blockchains, excluding stablecoins, is about $36.7 billion. In comparison, the value of stablecoins alone has approached $298.5 billion. Digital money is thus more than eight times larger today than all other tokenized real assets combined.

The largest category is not real estate, stocks, or art, but U.S. public debt. The value of tokenized Treasury bonds and related funds is about $15.9 billion, which accounts for over 40% of the entire RWA market without stablecoins.

This is no coincidence. Short-term Treasury bonds are liquid, easy to value, and generate current income. They can also be used as collateral in financial transactions. Therefore, blockchain does not need to create new demand for them— it just needs to allow investors to transfer existing assets to a 24/7 operating infrastructure.

Other segments remain significantly smaller. The value of distributed tokenized credit is about $7 billion, while tokenized stocks are just under $900 million. The on-chain real estate market is only about $203 million.

Data shows that tokenization is not developing today where the greatest democratization of investing was promised, but where financial institutions can most easily improve liquidity, cash management, and collateral utilization.

BlackRock Found Its First Practical Application

The most recognizable product remains BUIDL, BlackRock's tokenized money market fund. Its assets have reached nearly $2 billion, and the unit maintains a value of $1. The fund primarily invests in cash, U.S. Treasury bills, and repo transactions, providing investors with exposure to short-term interest rates through blockchain infrastructure.

However, this product is not intended for every cryptocurrency wallet holder. BUIDL is aimed at qualified institutional investors, which well illustrates the actual direction of market development. Tokenization at this stage does not eliminate regulations, the customer identification process, or capital requirements. It primarily changes the technical form of ownership and transfer of assets.

BlackRock has already declared nearly $150 billion in assets related to the digital market. This includes about $80 billion in exchange-traded products based on digital assets, $65 billion in managed stablecoin reserves, and the largest tokenized treasury fund in the world.

The Most Important Breakthrough Occurred Outside the Cryptocurrency Market

The mere growth of funds like BUIDL would not be enough to rebuild the capital market. There is still a need for infrastructure that allows for their safe use by banks, brokers, exchanges, and clearinghouses.

That is why the July DTCC test is more important than launching another RWA token. Transactions were conducted in a real production environment, including collateral pledges, securities lending, repos on Treasury bonds, buying and selling stocks, and flows of collateral deposits in the clearinghouse.

Participants in the tests included BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange, CME Group, Vanguard, State Street, Circle, and Microsoft. Tokenized assets operated on the private DTCC network and the public Canton network, which aimed to test the interoperability of different blockchains.

DTCC also demonstrated transactions where tokenized Treasury bonds, stocks, and ETFs were exchanged for digital cash. A delivery versus payment settlement was used, where the transfer of the asset and payment occurs simultaneously, reducing the risk that only one side of the transaction fulfills its obligation.

Thus, the true value of tokenization is not merely recording shares on the blockchain, but the ability to instantly connect assets, money, collateral, and settlement in one transaction.

Banks Are Not Waiting for a Full Revolution

JPMorgan has been developing its blockchain infrastructure for over a decade. The Kinexys platform has processed transactions worth over $3 trillion since its inception and handles an average of over $5 billion daily.

Compared to the traditional financial system, this is still not a huge scale. JPMorgan's global payment business alone processes about $10 trillion every day. However, the difference shows both the potential and the distance that remains to be covered.

The biggest benefit for banks may be the ability to move liquidity and collateral around the clock. Currently, companies often maintain excess cash or securities buffers because they are unsure whether they will be able to transfer assets between accounts, banks, and clearinghouses at the right moment. Tokenized collateral could be activated exactly when needed, reducing financing costs and the amount of capital tied up.

Citi estimates that the value of tokenized financial assets could rise to $5.5 trillion by 2030. The pessimistic scenario assumes $2.7 trillion, while the optimistic one predicts $8.2 trillion. The largest part of the market would consist of public equities and debt instruments, rather than real estate or shares in private companies.

In Citi's baseline scenario, tokenization could affect about 3% of the U.S. stock market, which would correspond to a value of approximately $2.6 trillion. An additional $800 billion could come from tokenized treasury bills, and around $600 billion from money market funds.

However, these forecasts should be treated with caution. Citi itself assesses the current level of adoption of tokenized assets at just 1.5 points on a ten-point scale. The bank also emphasizes that for the next few years, traditional and blockchain systems are likely to operate in parallel, initially increasing complexity and costs rather than reducing them immediately.

Not everyone will benefit from tokenization

The development of this market does not necessarily mean an automatic increase in the value of all cryptocurrencies associated with the RWA narrative. The biggest beneficiaries may primarily be asset managers, custodians, infrastructure operators, issuers of digital money, and networks capable of meeting privacy, regulatory compliance, and high transaction volume requirements.

Many assets may be tokenized on private or controlled networks, without creating demand for publicly listed tokens. The mere fact of using blockchain technology does not mean that the entire value of the new market will be captured by cryptocurrency investors.

Tokenization is becoming a real trend not because it promises to replace Wall Street, but because Wall Street has recognized it as a way to modernize its own infrastructure. The most important battle will not be about who issues the most tokens, but who will control the digital rails along which assets worth trillions of dollars will flow.

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