The $11 Trillion Future of Tokenized RWA

ARK Invest just released its 10th annual Big Ideas report, and the info has investors hype for 2026. Packed with eye-opening data, this annual study helps guide institutions, enabling them to plan for trends. Notably, this year’s report placed a lot of emphasis on the tokenized RWA sector, which is projected to surpass $11T in value by 2030. Here’s what you need to know.

Tokenization: The Third Wave of Financial Innovation

Tokenized RWAs (Real World Assets) is the term given to the act of bringing traditional investments and other real-world assets onto a blockchain network. This maneuver provides several benefits to issuers and investors alike.

Lower Costs

Tokenized assets are easier to track, store, and transfer. They offer key advantages in that their programmability enables the elimination of intermediaries in some workflows. Smart contracts can encode transfer rules and eligibility constraints, helping reduce operational overhead and making certain compliance steps more automated.

Faster Settlements

Additionally, it’s much faster to settle tokenized asset transactions versus traditional options. Depending on the network and structure, blockchain-based settlement can occur within minutes and across borders, reducing reconciliation friction and lowering counterparty exposure during volatile periods. Blockchain also provides a more transparent and tamper-resistant settlement record.

Fractional Ownership

Tokenized assets can be broken into smaller tokens, which can then be used to offer fractional ownership of assets. This capability has proven to be useful when dealing with larger assets like real estate or fine art.

Fractional ownership lowers the entry bar for investors. It also enables traders to diversify their holdings across high-level investments with less friction. In the future, fractional ownership of major assets will be common in the market.

ARK’s Forecast

ARK’s tokenization forecast states that tokenized assets could grow from roughly $19B to $11T by 2030—about ~1.38% of global financial assets. In ARK’s dataset, the market value of tokenized RWAs increased 208% to ~$18.9B in 2025, with the biggest categories led by U.S. Treasuries and commodities.

ARK also projects that the broader digital asset market (cryptocurrencies + smart contract networks) could reach ~$28T by 2030, reinforcing its view that on-chain financial infrastructure will keep expanding alongside crypto adoption.

The main factors leading to this growth include regulatory clarity and institutional adoption. New legislation like the GENIUS Act has helped to entice long-time institutional investors to start offering clients access to blockchain-based investment vehicles and tokenized instruments.

Source – ARK Invest

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Notably, major firms like BlackRock (BLK +0.28%) and JPMorgan (JPM +0.48%) are now driving adoption in the tokenization sector via their unique offerings.

Products like BlackRock’s scalable tokenized Treasury infrastructure for qualified investors are on the rise. Notably, these assets have driven investor interest to new heights, reinforcing the idea that tokenization is moving from “crypto-native” experimentation into institutional portfolio construction.

Additionally, access to new features and capital efficiency were cited as other top reasons why the market continues to grow. For example, 24/7 transfers and DeFi integrations both open the door for more ROI opportunities for traders—particularly when tokenized instruments can be used as collateral in lending and liquidity venues.

Why the Market is Ready for Tokenization

The market is eager for tokenization for many reasons. For one, traders are done with the limitations of traditional assets. Restrictive trading hours and multi-day settlement are at the top of the list of reasons why traders prefer tokenized assets. Tokenized assets can be traded 24/7 and can reduce operational friction due to their technical structure.

The BUIDL Effect

BlackRock launched its BUIDL (BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) initiative in March 2024 on Ethereum. The platform was designed to provide investors access to U.S. Treasury and cash exposure in tokenized form, distributing yield in a structure aligned with money market-style instruments.

Specifically, BUIDL tokenizes U.S. Treasuries and cash into yield-bearing tokens. This setup enables token holders to access Treasury-linked yield while also unlocking programmability and on-chain transferability. The platform offers scalability intended to meet the needs of institutional investors via its structure and distribution channels.

Securitize

As part of the BUIDL program, BlackRock created a strategic partnership with Securitize. This long-time tokenization platform is responsible for tokenizing BUIDL and handling compliance issuance.

Keenly, Securitize ensures that the tokens can be used in DeFi systems and as collateral in lending protocols where permitted. The report highlights how this approach can drive capital efficiency higher, further enticing more institutions to participate.

BNY Mellon

Notably, BNY Mellon (BK -0.79%) provides custody support for tokenized assets within the BUIDL ecosystem. As regulated custody options and institutional-grade controls mature, these providers can play a major role in bridging traditional and on-chain market structure.

Interoperability

At the core of BUIDL is flexibility. The platform enables investors to integrate tokenized positions into broader on-chain workflows. Uniquely, BUIDL was built to support several major blockchains and environments, improving distribution and composability across ecosystems, while still maintaining a compliance-forward posture.

Proven Success

BUIDL has seen massive adoption relative to the category’s early size. ARK cites the fund at approximately $1.7B by year-end 2025, making it one of the largest tokenized Treasury products and helping validate institutional demand for on-chain Treasury exposure.

BlackRock Lays the Blueprint for Institutional On-chain Finance

ARK researchers point out that BlackRock’s strategy has become a blueprint for other institutional investment firms seeking to enter the market. Its success and rapid adoption have inspired competitors to create similar offerings, furthering accessibility to digital assets across the board.

Stablecoin Dominance as the Gateway

Another key point ARK researchers highlight is the expansion of stablecoins as the settlement rail of on-chain finance. These digital assets aim to maintain price stability through reserve backing and arbitrage mechanisms, which makes them more practical for payments and settlement than volatile crypto assets.

ARK emphasizes adjusted stablecoin transaction volume as a way to better represent real user transfers by excluding MEV and intra-exchange activity. Under that adjusted methodology, ARK shows stablecoin throughput reaching record highs and comparing favorably to major legacy payment systems on a trailing 30-day basis.

DeFi Activity

Notably, much of this activity is linked to high-frequency on-chain finance. However, ARK’s adjusted-volume approach is intended to remove distortions and provide a cleaner proxy for real stablecoin transfers between users.

Stablecoins found favor among users and businesses because they can be transferred internationally in near real time and often at far lower cost than legacy rails, especially for cross-border value transfer. As regulatory clarity and institutional adoption improve, confidence in stablecoin-based settlement has also increased.

Q4 2025 Stablecoin Growth

In ARK’s data, the trailing 30-day average for adjusted stablecoin transaction volume reached roughly $3.5T in December 2025. ARK notes USDC dominated adjusted transaction volume (around ~60% share), followed by USDT (~35%).

Regulations Provide Transparency

When you zoom out to the industry as a whole, you can see that recent regulatory changes have spurred this growth. The GENIUS Act and other pending regulations continue to provide more transparency and clear guidelines to the market.

Additionally, geopolitical factors have helped to drive tokenization and stablecoin adoption. These assets saw major growth in regions ravaged by high inflation, where they enable residents to store value more safely and move money across borders with less friction.

Global Liquidity Unlocked

There is a long list of ways in which tokenized RWAs can unlock liquidity. For one, they support near-continuous settlement workflows. These systems rely on blockchain’s cryptographic and tamper-resistant nature to reduce issues that occur due to mismatched time zones and off-hours.

This approach can reduce counterparty risk across the board. It also eliminates gaps in trader accessibility, ensuring that traders can react more quickly to changing market conditions.

Another example of how global liquidity could be unlocked is through the use of advanced blockchain features like atomic swaps and delivery-versus-payment style mechanisms. These protocols can facilitate more synchronized asset/cash exchange, potentially reducing principal exposure by minimizing the need for prefunding.

They also improve capital velocity. Traditional settlement leaves liquidity trapped, preventing it from being used to access other investments. Tokenized assets can compress that “trapped liquidity” window, depending on market structure and compliance gating.

Eliminate Intermediaries

Another major advantage of this technology is that it can reduce reliance on intermediaries for certain workflows. Smart contracts can enforce transfer rules and eligibility checks directly at the token layer, minimizing manual reconciliation and reducing the surface area for operational disputes.

BlackRock Solidifies Positioning

BlackRock has made several maneuvers to position itself as a premier provider of tokenized fixed-income infrastructure. This shift of focus from purely an asset manager toward building tokenized market rails has been accelerating since the 2024 launch of BUIDL.

By 2025, BUIDL had proven its demand, supported by expanding ecosystem integrations and a broader institutional narrative around on-chain collateral and 24/7 transferability. As tokenized Treasury infrastructure expands, the pathway to tokenizing additional asset classes becomes more credible.

BlackRock, Inc.

BlackRock has come a long way from its 1988 launch as Blackstone Financial Management. The firm was renamed BlackRock in 1992, and later became independent from Blackstone. In 1999, the company went public, and its scale accelerated dramatically over the following decades through organic growth and major acquisitions.

In the 2020s, BlackRock increasingly positioned itself as a bridge between traditional markets and digital rails, including tokenized Treasury infrastructure. BUIDL has become one of the most visible institutional examples of tokenized money-market-style products at scale.

Today, BlackRock remains the world’s largest asset manager with over $11T in AUM. It continues to remain a pioneer in the tokenized RWA space, where the firm has positioned itself as one of the premier onramps for institutions seeking compliant exposure to on-chain financial instruments.

Those seeking a reputable asset management firm should recognize BlackRock as a smart option to consider. The company continually expands its holdings, and if ARK’s researchers are correct, it will be instrumental in future RWA tokenization adoption.

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The $11 Trillion Future of Tokenized RWA | Conclusion

When you look at the trajectory of the tokenized RWA market, it’s hard to envision anything but growth. The advantages that this technology brings to the market in terms of capital efficiency and settlement modernization make it compelling for both institutions and investors who want the liquidity of traditional finance with the speed and programmability of blockchain rails.

Learn about other interesting digital asset developments here.