Real-world asset tokenization has moved out of white papers and pilot programs into live markets where you can trade a slice of a Treasury fund or a stake in a pre-IPO unicorn.
When BlackRock's Larry Fink wrote that every stock, bond, fund, and asset could be tokenized, it read like a thesis. A year on, it’s more of a status update.
Tokenization has moved out of white papers and pilot programs into live markets where you can trade a slice of a Treasury fund, a stake in a pre-IPO unicorn, or a graded Pokémon card as easily as buying ETFs.
"Every stock, every bond, every fund, every asset can be tokenized." - Larry Fink, BlackRock 2025 Chairman's Letter to Investors.
Fink’s 2026 letter pushes the idea further, imagining a near future where the digital wallet already in half the planet's pockets can buy a basket of companies as easily as making a regular payment.
But where is the money flowing in the asset tokenization space, and which platforms are leading the charge? Let’s take a look.
What is RWA Tokenization?
Tokenization turns a claim on a real-world asset into a token on a blockchain. That token can represent a bond, a share, a fund unit, or a gram of gold, and in 2026… practically anything else.
On-chain tokens offer fractional ownership, round-the-clock settlement, and a direct plug into DeFi. Stablecoins were the first version of the idea at scale, putting dollars and other fiat currencies on-chain from the mid-2010s.
On-chain bonds were next to launch after the European Investment Bank issued a sterling digital bond through HSBC Orion in January 2023. Hong Kong's monetary authority printed a tokenized green bond weeks later.
The watershed arguably arrived in March 2024, when BlackRock launched BUIDL on Ethereum and watched it become the largest tokenized fund within weeks. The GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, then gave US stablecoins a federal framework and opened the floodgates.
In recent years, the asset tokenization industry has expanded considerably, and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) now count among the most popular digital assets.
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These Assets Are Leading the Charge
Three categories of tokenized assets are doing the heavy lifting right now.
Tokenized Treasuries and money market funds remain the dominant real-world asset on almost every chain, and for good reason. They pay yield, settle instantly, and double as DeFi collateral.
Circle’s USYC product currently leads the market, with almost $3 billion in short-term US Treasuries tokenized on-chain. BlackRock's BUIDL holds around $2.4 billion in assets, while Franklin Templeton's BENJI sits near $821 million. This category is the ballast beneath the entire sector.
The catch is that most only allow eligible, KYC'd, and whitelisted investors to interact with their contracts and redemption systems, rather than anyone with a wallet.
Source: RWA.xyz
On-chain stocks are also gathering serious momentum. Tokenized equities had a breakout year, climbing roughly 2,878% to around $963 million by January 2026. XStocks, from Backed Finance (now owned by Kraken), leads by holder count, while Ondo Global Markets holds the largest share by value.
Some tokens track a stock's price synthetically, while others are registered securities that pass through dividend economics.
Source: Tokenized Stocks Ecosystem Page
The spiciest corner of the tokenized asset space right now belongs to Hyperliquid's HIP-3. Activated in October 2025, it lets builders stake HYPE and launch their own perpetual markets. Ventuals built the first on-chain perp protocol for private company valuations, offering exposure to names like SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, and went from $100 million to $200 million in cumulative volume in just 17 days.
Trade.xyz dominates the broader category, accounting for more than 90% of HIP-3 open interest, and HIP-3 markets now drive over a third of all Hyperliquid trading volume. A recent FalconX report framed Hyperliquid as a direct challenger to traditional exchanges as these markets expand.
Which Blockchains Lead the RWA Race?
Tokenized assets are expanding rapidly on most major layer-1 chains, but Ethereum still leads by market share. Around 50% of real-world assets, totaling $16.6 billion, are now tokenized on the chain.
The breakout story of this cycle, however, is BNB Chain. Its RWA total value locked (TVL) has roughly doubled to about $4 billion across 14 active issuers spanning bonds, equities, indices, private credit, and commodities.
https://x.com/BNBCHAIN/status/2054064125538373888
On 1inch's RWA dashboard, BNB Chain leads tokenized-asset trading by volume, transactions, and active users.
Source: 1inch RWA Dashboard (via Dune)
On the smaller end of the spectrum, Solana anchors the retail collectibles and equities trade, while Plume, Stellar, Avalanche, and the XRP Ledger each carve out niches around speed, cost, and compliance.
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The Weird and Wonderful Edge
Beyond stocks and bonds, tokenization is reaching stranger corners.
On-chain Pokémon cards are now a real market. Collector Crypt vaults graded cards and mints them on Solana and BSC, with a gacha pack-opening mechanic and the option to redeem the physical card.
The franchise's 30th anniversary in 2026 has poured fuel on the trade, with graded cards now even being used as on-chain loan collateral.
There are some more obscure commodities being minted on-chain, too. Tokenized uranium and copper are live, alongside gold and silver perps. Gold tokens regularly crack the top 10 by trading volume.
One of the boldest experiments may be USD.AI, which tokenizes the Nvidia GPUs powering AI data centers as collateral for on-chain loans, funding facilities for operators like QumulusAI and Sharon AI.
As it turns out, compute may be becoming the most valuable commodity of all.
There’s a clear pattern here. If an asset has value and an owner, and some demand, someone is now racing to put it on-chain.
The only open question is what gets tokenized next.
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