With industry projections indicating around$ 50 billion in value will be reached this year, tokenization for real-world assets ( RWA ) is gaining a significant momentum.
At the outset, RWA verification represents real-world resources such as bonds, real property, or personal credit as online tokens on a blockchain, enabling these usually illiquid assets to get traded and managed more quickly.
In effect, verification allows traditional financial institutions to fractionalize rights, automated adherence, and access areas around the clock.
RWA parallelization has made major advancements lately. How many property will be incorporated into this program, and how fast will international adoption take off in 2025? Moataz Elsayed, co-founder of non-custodial pocket Okse, told .
Total value locked in tokenized assets reached over$ 176 billion in 2024, marking a 32 % increase year-to-date, with non-stablecoin assets growing by 53 %, a 2024 report from the Tokenized Asset Coalition ( TAC ) shows.
BlackRock opens the door for innovation.
RWA verification is” changing financing” with BlackRock “driving deployment” through cryptocurrencies and other permissionless services, Neal Wen, mind of international business development at Kronos Research, told .
” Real estate, treasuries, and other assets are becoming liquid on the blockchain, unlocking over$ 18 billion in market value with significant growth potential on the horizon”.
In March of last year, BlackRock launched its crypto fund, followed by various businesses like Franklin Templeton and Arbitrum, an Ethereum Layer-2 system.
While advising them about “pessimistic and optimistic scenarios” that could range from$ 1 trillion to$ 4 trillion valuations for the sector by 2030, major companies like McKinsey claim that tokenization gives financial institutions a” strategic advantage.”
Major financial institutions that were launching the industry more affirmed the firm’s expansion. By 2030, according to Standard Chartered,$ 30 trillion in crypto illiquid assets would be expected, while Boston Consulting Group projected$ 16 trillion in crypto expensive goods would be.
Decentralized record market Clearpool shared with that Ozean, the RWA-focused process it is building, has onboarded over 368, 000 special records for its Poseidon testnet.
The future promises growing traction in real estate, private credit, and other asset classes like commodities, according to Clearpool CEO and co-founder Jakob Kronbichler in an interview.” While tokenized treasuries and stablecoins currently dominate RWA use cases, the future promises growing traction in.
Clearpool claimed in its Q4 report that it had processed over$ 650 million in total loans originated for Q4 2024 alone, achieving a 51 % increase in total value locked.
” BlackRock’s credibility in the RWA movement is paving the way for other institutions to follow suit”, Kronbichler told .
Since its launch in December 2023, Clearpool Prime has accumulated$ 124 million in loans, which is particularly impressive.
Innovations and shifts
According to research from DeFi liquidity protocol Tren Finance, the surge is in line with a broader trend of traditional financial institutions warming up to tokenized markets.
Executives across broader sectors are paying attention, too. Some 86 % of Fortune 500 executives now see the benefits of tokenization, with 35 % already cooking up tokenization projects, the TAC report shows.
” Tokenization offers numerous advantages, solving a variety of problems in TradFi”, Kronbichler explained, citing use cases for liquidity, fractional ownership, automation, transparency, and programmability.
Innovation in treasury products hasn’t slowed either. Platforms are rolling out features that institutional investors have been craving, like round-the-clock redemptions and peer-to-peer transfers—making blockchain-based finance look increasingly attractive to the suit-and-tie crowd.
Kronbichler also points out recent political shifts in the United States as potential catalysts for traditional finance’s “engagement with RWAs.” In December last year, President-elect Donald Trump named Paul Atkins to lead the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission.  ,
Kronbichler cited Atkins ‘ “brings expertise that could drive regulatory transparency and accelerate institutional adoption.”
Atkins serves on the advisory board of Securitize, a Clearpool partner with a focus on tokenization and working with BlackRock.
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