Foreign media comment that the most significant development in the digital assets space may not be Bitcoin’s price or a new wave of public blockchain competition, but the rapid expansion of real-world asset tokenization. The article cites data from RWA.xyz, showing that as of April 2026, the total value of tokenized real-world assets—excluding stablecoins—has reached $29.27 billion, with tokenized U.S. Treasuries accounting for $13.4 billion.
The scale is still small, but the growth rate is rapid.
In absolute terms, $29.27 billion remains relatively small within the global capital markets. However, the article emphasizes that the rate of growth is more significant. The tokenized real assets market has grown from approximately $1.5 billion at the beginning of 2023 to $29.27 billion by April 2026, nearly a 20-fold increase in just three years. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone have risen from $380 million in the first quarter of 2023 to $13.4 billion.
The text also notes that the tokenized commodities market has reached $7.3 billion, primarily composed of gold-related products; tokenized stocks exceed $960 million; and yield-bearing on-chain USD instruments have increased by approximately $8 billion. These products, situated between stablecoins and tokenized funds, are emerging as transitional tools for institutions entering the on-chain market.
Traditional financial institutions are entering the market en masse.
The article states that more than 40 major financial institutions have issued or tested tokenized products on public blockchains, including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup Securities, Société Générale, Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange, HSBC, Euroclear, and the Bank of England.
Among these, BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL, with a size of approximately $2.4 billion, operates on Ethereum and has been expanded to multiple blockchains. Franklin Templeton runs its tokenized money market fund, BENJI, across multiple blockchains and has partnered with Ondo Finance to launch a tokenized ETF product that can be traded 24/7 via crypto wallets.
The article argues that this wave of change differs from the on-chain experiments of 2021. Early tokenization was primarily driven by DeFi projects, with limited scale and narrow use cases. Today, the leading players are large asset managers, custodians, exchanges, and financial market infrastructure providers, signaling that tokenization is shifting from marginal experiments to regulated financial pathways.
It's not just assets that are on-chain, but also financial processes.
The article summarizes this trend as “rebuilding the underlying infrastructure of finance.” It’s not just one type of asset being moved on-chain, but the very processes of settlement, collateralization, lending, and trading. For example, Treasury bonds that previously took days to settle can now be settled in seconds; money market funds can serve directly as DeFi collateral; ETFs can be traded 24/7; and assets such as equities and private credit become easier to fragment, transfer, and continuously priced.
In the author’s view, tokenized U.S. Treasuries have expanded first because they simultaneously satisfy demands for yield and liquidity. Corporate treasury departments or fund managers hold short-term U.S. Treasuries primarily to earn low-risk returns; by holding them through a tokenized structure, they can still capture Treasury yields while benefiting from faster settlement, peer-to-peer transfers, and direct use as collateral on-chain.
- Circle's USYC is approximately $2.7 billion.
- The total size of Ondo-related products is approximately $2.6 billion.
- BlackRock's BUIDL has a size of approximately $2.4 billion.
The regulatory environment is also changing.
The article suggests that another reason institutions are accelerating their involvement is a shift in the U.S. regulatory stance. It notes that in January 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued its first official statement on tokenized securities, followed in February by approval for WisdomTree’s tokenized money market fund to engage in intraday trading. In March, the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission jointly released guidance on the classification of digital assets.
In addition, the GENIUS Act related to stablecoins took effect in 2025, and the CLARITY Act addressing market structure was approved by the committee in May 2026. The article concludes that tokenization is gaining a clearer regulatory environment, which is more favorable for large financial institutions to bring products to market.
Additional information: The article is categorized as an opinion commentary, with the core assessment being that the current $29.27 billion size does not indicate market maturity, but rather reflects that institutional-grade tokenization is still in an early stage of expansion.