Crypto has spent over a decade trading narratives. Now, for the first time, it is trading real assets. However, many assets and physical items were not designed to live on-chain. For many years, representing real-world assets (RWAs) on a blockchain was only an idea or theoretical experiment. That’s why Bitcoin was nicknamed digital gold, and Ethereum championed programmable money. However, that is starting to change due to the recent demand surge and interest in tokenization.
In 2025 alone, tokenized RWAs grew by 66% to reach roughly $23 billion. That trend has validated the experiment of tokenizing relatively stable, familiar assets. That expansion is now moving into more complex markets, especially in the energy sector. More projects are now exploring the move to tokenize commodities like oil and power markets to create a multi-trillion-dollar sector on-chain.
Tokenized RWA market growth 2018-2025. Source: ResearchGate
While the general idea is that “tokenization is the future,” the bigger question is: what actually changes when assets move on-chain, and who captures value when they do?
Investor Takeaway
The next phase of crypto growth will be driven by tokenized real-world assets, particularly in high-value sectors like energy and capital markets.
The Expansion of Tokenization from Precious Metals to Oil
Tokenization did not start with complex financial instruments. It started with trust in familiar assets like gold, arguably the oldest store of value, which became one of the first assets to be tokenised. Products like tokenized gold, including Pax Gold (PAXG) and Tether Gold (XAUT), were created. With these set in motion, individuals and institutions got the opportunity to explore blockchain-based assets under regulated conditions, as they would stocks and other traditional investment products. They also didn’t need to hold the underlying assets since tokenized products only mirror the price movements of their connected assets.
From there, growth followed. Treasury-backed instruments like Ondo Finance (USDY/OUSG) and the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) gave investors something familiar, stable, and verifiable on-chain. The expansion into tokenized funds, treasury instruments, and government securities showed real demand for blockchain-based assets. With these assets, users could settle transactions faster, move across borders seamlessly, and integrate with programmable systems.
In short, tokenization was no longer just about value proposition or investment. It was becoming a new way to move and manage money using blockchain technology. Now, that expansion is moving into commodities and productive markets, especially the energy sector, where commodities like oil and natural gas dominate the markets. Unlike gold, which is largely a long-term store of value, energy markets are deeply tied to global economic activity.
Bringing these markets on-chain opens up a much larger opportunity, but it also comes with a different level of complexity across pricing, settlement, and regulatory considerations. The progression from gold to oil-related commodities reflects a broader pattern of tokenization, starting with trusted assets while expanding into areas where the use cases are limitless.
Asset Tokenization Walked So Capital Markets Could Run
The more interesting dynamic about RWA tokenization is not the massive expansion and potential market size across asset classes. It is the quiet movement it’s making into the financial market. Tokenized stocks are now being explored and seeing significant demand for equities like TSLAx (Tesla), AAPLx (Apple), NVDAx (NVIDIA) on trading platforms like Ondo Finance. As of March 2026, the total value of the tokenized stock market crossed $1billion, showing a massive RWA breakout.
Mortgage markets have also started experiencing real activity on blockchain rails, with companies like Figure Technologies thriving in that area. For instance, borrowers can now use cryptocurrencies as collateral to fund their mortgage down payments through an exchange like Coinbase.
In banks and financial institutions, tokenized deposits are also gaining traction for 24/7 foreign exchange settlement and cross-border payments outside the constraints of traditional banking hours. Even traditional players like JPMorgan Chase are actively building tokenized financial systems for use cases like transaction settlement rails and blockchain-based deposits.
The new development is corroborated at the highest levels of global finance. In its April 2026 note on tokenized finance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) states that tokenization is “increasingly shaping financial system developments” within regulated institutions such as banks, asset managers, and financial markets. Tokenization is no longer limited to crypto innovation, as it’s slowly becoming embedded in the core of existing financial systems.
Investor Takeaway
The shift from gold to energy and equities signals that tokenization is entering high-liquidity, real-economy sectors.
The Tokenization Growth Is Still Incomplete
There are conversations about how tokenization has moved beyond a concept to reality. Real assets are on-chain now with real capital flowing across industries. The big players are also building. However, analysts believe tokenization is still in its early days. According to Marko Vidrih, the co-founder and COO at global tokenization platform, RWA.io:
“We are moving beyond the experimentation phase, but the transition is still underway.”
While the infrastructure already exists, the system around it is still forming. From a more institutional vantage point, Maghnus Mareneck, the co-founder and co-CEO of Cosmos Labs, the infrastructure powering the Cosmos blockchain, is even more direct:
“The shift is already underway, and we have enough live evidence to say so with confidence. Platforms like Ondo and Figure have digitized the equities and mortgage loan markets. These are not pilots or proofs of concept. They are production operations serving genuine institutional demand.”
The implication is clear: tokenization is live, but not yet fully mainstream. According to Vidrih:
“Two things are critical to fully realize the shift to on-chain capital markets: regulatory clarity across jurisdictions and reduced fragmentation across blockchains through seamless interoperability.”
Mareneck also agrees. According to him:
“What is still catching up is global regulatory coverage. The US, Japan, and South Korea are moving with real conviction, while other regions are still in an exploration phase.”
Besides regulation, both experts see liquidity as a major missing piece as far as the potential of tokenization is concerned. The growth in tokenized assets has been significant, but secondary markets remain relatively thin. This is not because the assets lack value. It is because the markets around them are still fragmented.
As Vidrih explains:
“Tokenisation alone doesn’t create liquidity — it must also be coupled with market structure.”
Across blockchain networks, assets and liquidity remain dispersed, limiting efficiency and scalability. Mareneck explains the issue:
“Liquidity follows distribution. As long as tokenized securities can only change hands within closed or restricted ecosystems, the available pool of liquidity is finite. ”
Tokenized assets are often confined to closed ecosystems. Trading them may require new onboarding processes, new custody arrangements, and new counterparty relationships. That limits participation and reduces market depth.
The challenges of RWA tokenization. Source: Rapid Innovation
In traditional finance, assets move through brokerages, exchanges, and well-established distribution channels. The broader the access, the deeper the market. Tokenized assets have not yet reached that level of integration. The primary constraint is no longer technology, but unresolved structural issues, such as regulatory fragmentation, inconsistent legal frameworks, interoperability friction, and siloed liquidity across networks.
Investor Takeaway
Tokenization is moving into production, but structural gaps in regulation, liquidity, and interoperability still limit its full market potential.
The Value Capture Problem: Which Blockchain Wins?
Currently, blockchains like Ethereum, Stellar, Avalanche, XRP, and Polygon support RWA tokenization. However, one of the most misunderstood aspects of tokenization is how value flows through the system. A common misconception is that as more real-world assets move on-chain, the underlying blockchains hosting them will naturally benefit. More assets should mean more transactions, more users, and therefore higher token valuations.
In reality, it is more complicated. As Vidrih notes:
“Tokenization is less a short-term price catalyst and more a structural driver of long-term value.”
Tokenization strengthens the role of blockchain infrastructure, but it does not guarantee immediate or uniform value accrual. Mareneck drives this further:
“Whether any given chain benefits economically from tokenization will depend almost entirely on the role that chain is actually playing in a given deployment.”
This means value does not flow simply because assets exist on-chain. It flows based on function — which layer is doing the actual work. At a high level, there are three layers where value can accumulate:
The Infrastructure layer, where blockchains and settlement systems exist
The applications layer, where platforms that issue and manage tokenized assets thrive
The Distribution layer, comprising channels controlling access to users and liquidity
Tokenization touches all three, but it does not reward them equally. In many cases, institutions retain control over distribution and liquidity, capturing a significant portion of the value themselves. In others, infrastructure providers benefit from increased usage and settlement demand. The outcome depends on how the system is structured.
This is why the question of “which blockchain wins” is less useful than it appears. The more important question is: which part of the system controls access, settlement, and flow? These three areas determine where value could be locked.
Why Are More Institutions Moving to Tokenization Now?
The surge in interest in institutional tokenization reflects a couple of factors that have been building over time. Vidrih points out that:
“Blockchain is no longer viewed as experimental but increasingly as core financial infrastructure.”
At the same time, Mareneck highlights the role of maturity and proof:
“After more than a decade of live deployment, blockchain infrastructure has been stress-tested at scale… Institutions like JPMorgan do not make infrastructure investments of that magnitude based on a whitepaper.”
Technology has matured. Regulatory clarity, while incomplete, has improved. And real-world use cases have demonstrated measurable value. Tokenization did not suddenly become important. Instead, it became deployable.
Investor Takeaway
Institutional success with tokenization will not be defined by asset volume, but by control over access, settlement, and liquidity.
Final Thoughts
The expansion of tokenization from gold to oil to financial markets reflects how RWAs are expanding. An idea of having simple representations of value to the blockchain systems has now evolved into the “next big thing” for crypto-native and traditional institutions. For now, the growth of on-chain capital markets is visible.
Assets are already moving, and infrastructure is already being rebuilt. The real question now is not whether tokenization works, but who controls the system it is creating.
