Tokenized Real-World Asset Value Jumps Fourfold to $26 Billion

The value of tokenized real-world assets has reportedly increased nearly fourfold in the last year.

These assets have surpassed $26.4 billion in on-chain value, up from around $6.6 billion this time last year, per data from RWA.xyz, which tracks tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). The organization’s calculations do not include stablecoins.

The data shows that six categories of tokenized assets have passed the $1 billion mark: private credit, commodities, U.S. Treasurys, corporate bonds, non-U.S. government debt and institutional alternative funds.

The group’s findings were first reported by Coindesk, which noted that much of the activity relates to asset issuance and not active trading. On-chain transfer data shows many of the biggest RWA transactions hovering around $10 million for each transfer, a pattern in keeping with institutional allocation batching rather than ongoing market activity, the report added.

As PYMNTS has written, tokenized RWAs are part of a broader blockchain landscape that has captured the attention of various players across payments, finance and commerce.

“Tokenized RWAs have the potential to make assets more liquid, accessible and efficient while enhancing transparency, security and global reach,” that report said.

“Representing RWAs on the blockchain — such as real estate, private equity and venture investments, fine art and collectibles, physical commodities like gold, fixed income instruments, intellectual property assets and even stocks and equities — can transform the way ownership of assets is recorded and enable new functions.”

In other tokenization news, federal banking regulators issued guidance last week that says that if a security is tokenized but confers the same legal rights as its conventional form, it should receive the same capital treatment as that traditional security.

“At the same time, a derivative that references an eligible tokenized security should be treated for capital purposes as a derivative that references the non-tokenized form of the security,” said the guidance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve.

The rule does not call for a different treatment depending on the use of permissioned or permissionless blockchains, the regulators added.

“The message from regulators is that tokenization may change the plumbing of financial markets, but it does not change the underlying regulatory treatment of the assets themselves,” PYMNTS wrote.

“For finance leaders exploring distributed ledger infrastructure, the clarification effectively removes a regulatory overhang that has slowed experimentation with tokenized bonds, equities and other financial instruments.”