Tokenization

What does tokenization even mean?

Tokenization means taking ownership of a real asset (a Treasury bill, a fund share, a building, a bar of gold) and recording it as a digital token on a blockchain. The token is the claim; the blockchain is the ledger that tracks who owns what.

Crucially, nothing about the underlying asset changes. A tokenized Treasury bill still pays the same yield and is still backed by the same government debt. What changes is the plumbing. Instead of settling through banks, custodians, and transfer agents over days, ownership moves in seconds, around the clock, and can be split into tiny fractions. That's the whole pitch: more liquidity, near-instant settlement, lower back-office cost, and access for investors who were previously locked out.

Most of the value today sits in a narrow slice, cash-like instruments, because those are the easiest to tokenize and the most useful as on-chain collateral.

The market, in numbers

Excluding stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets crossed roughly $32B in mid-2026, up from about $12B a year earlier. Include stablecoins (which are themselves tokenized dollars) and the total runs north of $240B. Boston Consulting Group has projected up to $16 trillion by 2030, the number everyone in the room is chasing.

Where the money is: tokenized Treasuries and money-market funds (~$10B+) and private credit (~$8B) dominate the institutional side, with gold (~$5B across PAXG and XAUT), real estate (~$2–3B), and tokenized stocks (<$1B) filling out the rest.

Which chains and protocols are doing it?

Ethereum is the default settlement layer. Most large funds launch there first, because that's where institutional custody and liquidity already live. From there, issuers expand multi-chain to reach different users: Solana (speed, retail reach), Polygon / Avalanche / Arbitrum / Optimism / Base (low-cost, Ethereum-adjacent), Aptos and Sui (newer high-performance chains), and Stellar (Franklin Templeton's original home).

Securitize

Just as important are the platforms that do the actual issuing and compliance. If tokenization has a plumbing company, it's Securitize the regulated infrastructure behind the biggest funds. It's the only vertically integrated, SEC-registered player that is simultaneously a transfer agent, broker-dealer, alternative trading system, and fund administrator, meaning it can legally issue a tokenized security, record who owns it, and let it trade, all in-house.

That's why it's behind the marquee deals: transfer agent for BlackRock's BUIDL, issuance partner for Apollo's ACRED, plus KKR, Hamilton Lane, and VanEck. BlackRock is also a strategic investor. In July 2026, Securitize went public on the NYSE (ticker SECZ) via a SPAC merger and tokenized its own stock on day one, becoming the exchange's first "digital transfer agent." When a business wants to tokenize a fund, Securitize is often the one actually pressing the button.

Who has tokenized what — the cheat sheet

Sources: CoinDesk — BlackRock deepens tokenization push, The Block — BUIDL multi-chain expansion, PRNewswire — BUIDL on Solana, Stellar — Franklin Templeton BENJI, PRNewswire — Apollo & Securitize ACRED, CoinDesk — Securitize NYSE listing, American Banker — Invesco/Superstate USTB, Forbes — the $60B tokenized asset market, MetaMask — RWA categories in 2026