Tokenized Assets May Reach $400 Billion Scale by 2026, Banks and Asset Management Institutions Accelerate Entry

Odaily According to reports, as stablecoins validate product-market fit (PMF) in 2025, the crypto industry is pushing "on-chain dollars" to play a further role by tokenizing assets such as stocks, ETFs, money market funds, and gold, serving as tradable on-chain financial building blocks. Multiple industry executives predict that the tokenized asset market size is expected to grow to approximately $400 billion by 2026.

Samir Kerbage, Chief Investment Officer of Hashdex, stated that the current scale of tokenized assets is about $36 billion, and the next phase of growth will stem more from a structural reshaping of value transfer methods rather than purely speculative demand. He pointed out that as stablecoins mature as "on-chain cash," funds will naturally flow to investable assets, becoming a bridge between digital currencies and digital capital markets.

The report indicates that the scale of tokenized assets had already approached $20 billion in 2025, with traditional financial institutions like BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of New York Mellon deeply involved. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino believes that 2026 will be a crucial year for banks to move from pilot projects to actual deployment, especially in emerging markets, where tokenization can help issuers bypass traditional infrastructure limitations.

Furthermore, Centrifuge COO Jürgen Blumberg anticipates that by the end of 2026, the total value locked (TVL) of on-chain real-world assets (RWA) could exceed $100 billion, with more than half of the world's top 20 asset management institutions launching tokenized products. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo noted that natively tokenized stocks and ETFs will gradually replace synthetic asset models and become high-quality collateral within DeFi.

CoinDesk argues that legal clarity, cross-chain interoperability, and a unified identity system remain key prerequisites for the expansion of the tokenization market, but industry consensus has shifted from "whether to go on-chain" to "the scale and speed of going on-chain." (CoinDesk)