Tokenized assets exceed $25 billion after nearly quadrupling in a year
Treasurys, private credit, and commodities are driving growth, but most tokenized assets remain isolated from DeFi markets.
By Sam Reynolds|Edited by Shaurya Malwa Mar 8, 2026, 11:04 a.m.
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What to know:
- Tokenized real-world assets excluding stablecoins have surged to more than $25 billion onchain, nearly quadrupling in a year, with six categories now exceeding $1 billion each.
- Much of the growth reflects large, infrequent institutional allocations rather than active secondary trading, as issuers prioritize capital formation and fundraising efficiency over liquidity.
- Only about 12% of the roughly $8.5 billion in RWA-backed stablecoins is deployed in DeFi, leaving most assets siloed behind compliance barriers and raising questions about whether tokenization will integrate with permissionless finance.
Six asset classes now exceed $1 billion onchain, but just 12% of RWA-backed stablecoin supply has entered DeFi protocols.
Tokenized real-world assets, excluding stablecoins, have crossed $25 billion in onchain value, nearly quadrupling from roughly $6.4 billion a year earlier, according to data from RWA.xyz.
The milestone, and continued growth, as RWAs hit the $20 billion mark at the end of 2025, continues a shift from early experimentation toward institutional-scale deployment. Asset managers, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and WisdomTree, have launched tokenized fund products over the past year, while the number of tokenized U.S. Treasury offerings alone expanded from 35 to over 50, according to data compiled by Nexus Data Labs.
Six tokenized asset categories have now crossed the $1 billion threshold: U.S. Treasuries, commodities, private credit, institutional alternative funds, corporate bonds, and non-U.S. government debt, according to RWA.xyz data.
Issuance outpaces integration
Still, much of the activity reflects asset issuance rather than active trading.
Despite the growth in supply, much of the activity reflects asset issuance rather than active trading. Onchain transfer data shows many of the largest RWA transactions clustering around $10 million per transfer, a pattern consistent with institutional allocation batching rather than continuous market activity.
A February 2026 survey from tokenization platform Brickken reinforced the point: 53.8% of tokenized asset issuers said capital formation and fundraising efficiency are their primary motivation for tokenizing, while just 15.4% cited liquidity.
Even when assets move onchain, most remain walled off from decentralized finance.
6/7
— Diego | Take Profits (@0xTakeProfits) March 7, 2026
The twist nobody talks about:
RWA-backed stablecoin supply = ~$8.5B
Only $1B (11.8%) is actually deployed in DeFi
88% sits idle because of KYC/whitelisting walls
Permissionless assets (reUSD, etc.) hit 96%+ utilization
Composability is the next unlock for RWA
h/t… pic.twitter.com/gpbyRl9CD0
Nexus Data Labs estimates roughly $8.49 billion in RWA-backed stablecoin supply exists, but only about $1 billion, or 11.8%, is currently deployed in DeFi protocols.
The remaining 88% sits outside onchain lending and trading systems, largely because the underlying assets impose compliance requirements, including KYC checks, transfer restrictions, and whitelisting.
That gap frames the sector's central question heading into the second half of the year. Tokenized asset supply is growing fast enough that some projections place the market above $400 billion by year-end.
Whether those assets remain siloed in permissioned structures or begin integrating with the composable collateral, lending, and trading systems that define DeFi will likely determine whether tokenization scales as a parallel settlement layer for traditional finance or becomes something structurally different.
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