Tokenized RWA market tops $30bn, growing 1,000% in two years

The market for tokenized real-world assets has crossed $30 billion, growing more than 1,000 per cent from early 2024, according to data published on Saturday by a16z crypto. Tokenized U.S. Treasury debt accounts for roughly half the total at about $15 billion. Commodities such as gold are close to $5 billion.

The figure, posted by the venture firm on X, is a 10-fold expansion in just over two years. Tal Elyashiv, co-founder of Securitize and a principal at SPiCE VC, said the milestone is more than a headline number.

“The $30 billion figure is meaningful. It is also worth disaggregating,” Elyashiv said. He noted that much of the growth has been driven by U.S. Treasury debt that is already tokenised inside large asset managers, rather than by retail-driven crypto issuance. “It did not have to build the market from scratch,” he said.

CoinGecko’s RWA Report 2026, published in April, captured the run-up. The research shop tracked the tokenised RWA market cap at $19.32 billion at the end of the first quarter, up 256.7 per cent from $5.42 billion at the start of 2025. The $10.7 billion of additional growth in roughly five weeks since then reflects continued institutional issuance and methodological differences in what each tracker counts.

Tokenised U.S. Treasuries crossed $10 billion for the first time on Feb. 11 and stood at $13 billion by March 31, equivalent to 67.2 per cent of the sector. Most of that exposure runs through products from BlackRock (BUIDL), Franklin Templeton (FOBXX) and Ondo Finance, with Securitize and Superstate handling the issuance and transfer-agent layers.

Tokenised commodities crossed $5 billion on Jan. 19 and reached $5.55 billion by quarter-end, up 289.1 per cent for the period and now 28.7 per cent of the sector. Gold is dominant. PAX Gold (PAXG) from Paxos and Tether Gold (XAUT) lead by market value. Matrixdock’s XAUM and Kinesis’s KAU and KAG silver token follow. Tokenised gold spot trading volume hit $90.70 billion in the first quarter, surpassing the $84.64 billion logged for the whole of 2025.

Stocks and ETFs join the mix

Equity tokenisation has begun to issue on chain after years of U.S. securities-law uncertainty. Tokenised stocks finished the first quarter at $486.69 million in market cap, up from $2.09 million in June 2025. Tokenised ETFs, a category that did not exist before July 2025, reached $297.50 million by quarter-end. Backed Finance and a handful of European-domiciled issuers run the bulk of those wrappers. Venues including Hyperliquid offer perpetual contracts on tokenised exposures via its HIP-3 framework.

RWA perpetuals trading volume hit $524.79 billion in the first quarter, the fourth consecutive quarter of sequential growth, according to CoinGecko. The figure includes notional turnover on perp products referencing tokenised commodities, equities and Treasury proxies on platforms led by Hyperliquid.

Why the curve steepened

The acceleration since early 2024 has had two main drivers. The first is the entry of large traditional-finance issuers willing to put real assets on public chains, led by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund. The second is a rate environment that made short-duration Treasury yield attractive to crypto-native treasuries that previously parked idle stablecoins in DeFi lending markets.

That shift turned tokenised Treasuries into a substitute for on-chain dollar yield. It pulled flows from the largest stablecoin issuers and DeFi protocols including Aave and Pendle. Bitwise’s recent move to take over Superstate’s tokenised-fund business widens the institutional distribution channel further.

For crypto-native firms, the read-through is more direct. Coinbase’s first-quarter results showed trading revenue under pressure even as the exchange picked up market share in custody and tokenised-asset settlement. The mix shift toward fee-and-yield revenue is precisely what RWA growth supports.

What the numbers do not say

Disaggregation matters, as Elyashiv said. Most of the $15 billion in tokenised Treasuries sits in a few big funds. Trading happens between qualified-purchaser counterparties. Issuers can place size, but secondary turnover in any one token is thin. Commodities trade more widely. Gold tokens are listed on more venues. Volume still concentrates in PAX Gold and Tether Gold.

Tokenised stocks and ETFs are smallest by market cap. The regulatory questions are biggest. U.S. issuance of tokenised single-name equities sits in a grey zone. The Securities and Exchange Commission has not finalised rule-making on transfer-agent recognition for blockchain registries. Most of the $486 million in tokenised stock market cap is non-U.S. issuance. U.S. retail access is limited.

What is next

The next test is the second quarter. CoinGecko found that the RWA market grew faster than tokenised stablecoin supply in the first quarter. That had not happened before in this dataset. Treasury issuance from BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Ondo is set to continue. Equity tokenisation needs an SEC ruling to scale in the United States.

Hyperliquid is expanding HIP-3 perp listings. Backed Finance is rolling out more wrapped-equity products. Bitwise has the Superstate distribution channel after the takeover. Yield differentials over stablecoins are the variable to watch. Once the Federal Reserve begins easing, tokenised Treasury yields fall with the front end, and stablecoin lending in DeFi lending markets becomes more competitive again.