coindesk.com
Stablecoins were crypto’s breakout product in 2025 to the mainstream — and in 2026, the industry is pushing to put those onchain dollars to work by turning everything from equities to money market funds to gold into tokenized, tradable building blocks on blockchain rails.
After years of pilots and proof-of-concepts, tokenization now look less like a niche crypto experiment and more like a distribution upgrade for capital market, with financial giants like BlackRock, JPMorgan or BNY deeply involved. The tokenized asset market almost quadrupled through the year to nearly $20 billion by the end of 2025, RWA.xyz data shows.
The stakes are large, but so are the bottlenecks. Legal clarity, interoperability across chains and shared identity rails are needed to keep tokenized markets from fracturing into disconnected pools.
CoinDesk spoke with founders and industry leaders about the trends that will define tokenization’s 2026 playbook.
Tokenized assets to hit $400 billion
Tokenized assets could top $400 billion by the end of next year, up from $36 billion today, said Samir Kerbage, CIO at Hashdex.
"Stablecoins, having proven strong product-market fit in 2025, are just the beginning," he said.
"The next leg is defined less by speculation and more by a fundamental restructuring of how value is transferred — and tokenization sits at the heart of this transition," he added.
That shift is being driven by user demand and capital flows as well.
"As cash gets tokenized with stablecoins, it’s natural to expect that those dollars will look for investment assets — creating a powerful bridge between digital money and digital capital markets," Kerbage said.
But scaling tokenized markets still requires foundational work such as legal clarity, interoperability between chains and shared identity frameworks.
"Like the early internet, the foundations are being laid," he said. "The question is no longer if finance moves onchain, but how much of it will — and how fast."
From institutional trials to market integration
For much of the last decade, tokenization has been a pilot project for many traditional financial institutions. But according to Paolo Ardoino, CEO of stablecoin issuer Tether and CIO of crypto exchange Bitfinex, 2026 will be the year banks move from testing to implementation.
"Tokenization is edging closer to becoming a mainstream capital raising tool," he said. "The efficiency gains and benefits of broader access are simply too big to ignore."
Ardoino expects emerging markets to lead the way. Local issuers can bypass legacy infrastructure, giving global investors access to new capital markets at lower cost, he explained.
"Issuers in growing economies have an unrivaled opportunity to boost market inclusion through blockchain-native capital raises," Ardoino said.
Jürgen Blumberg, COO of tokenization specialist Centrifuge, sees similar momentum.
He predicted that the total value locked (TVL) in real-world asset (RWA) tokens will exceed $100 billion by the end of 2026, with more than half of the world’s top 20 asset managers launching tokenized products.
"Index providers will move onchain," he said, and most major index firms will commit to onchain versions of their products through next year.
Tokenized equities, ETFs and DeFi convergence
One of the biggest frontiers that took off last year was tokenized equities.
Robert Leshner, founder of tokenization firm Superstate, said the longstanding legal and operational barriers began to shift.
"Public equities move from 'off-limits' to 'in play,'" he said in an email, with the emergence of "credible, issuer-led onchain equity structures."
A slew of trading platforms including Robinhood, Kraken and Gemini started offering token versions of the most popular stocks. But the move from wrapped, synthetic assets to direct issuance is gaining momentum as well, Leshner added.
Carlos Domingo, CEO of tokenization specialist Securitize, said that "the right way is native tokenization, working with the issuer, where the token is the real share with the same rights and value."
Domingo also expects tokenized ETFs to gain traction. Once users hold stablecoins, he argued, they’ll want exposure to U.S. markets — and tokenized indices like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 are a logical next step.
"That’s an ETF," he said. If even a small share of stablecoin capital shifts into these products, it could eclipse today’s synthetic asset experiments.
Domingo also sees a push for bringing more real-world assets to decentralized finance (DeFi) as collateral to borrow against. Instead of gating entire DeFi protocols, the focus is on ensuring that onchain assets entering permissionless pools come from regulated issuers.
"DeFi needs institutional adoption to grow, and institutions need high-quality collateral," he said. "That’s going to be tokenized assets."
The infrastructure phase
For Gabe Otte, co-founder of Dinari, the real work this year will be on the infrastructure layer.
"Tokenized securities won’t live on a single ledger," he said. "They will span multiple chains, platforms, and custodial environments."
The key to avoiding fragmentation, he argued, will be infrastructure that enables assets, data and settlement instructions to move across systems seamlessly.
Tokenization, he said, is becoming "a new form of globalization for financial assets" — allowing faster portfolio rebalancing, more dynamic collateral flows, and greater cross-border participation.
Tokenized gold's rise
One asset class in particular is already gaining traction: gold.
"With gold hitting all-time highs and tokenized gold heating up fast, 2026 is shaping up to be the breakout year," said Lorenzo R., co-founder of USDT0. He sees tokenized gold becoming the collateral layer for onchain finance, just as stablecoins became the settlement layer.
"The same structural pressures that propelled stablecoins — rate volatility, geopolitical fragmentation, declining trust in sovereign debt — are now converging around gold-backed assets," he said.
"What’s becoming clear is that programmable gold will evolve from a niche RWA category into the default hard-asset standard for onchain finance," he added.