Real-world asset tokenization now lives in active markets. Investors hold bits of stocks, bonds, funds, and even collectibles on blockchain. CoinMarketCap said this happened by early 2026, in its April 2026 report.
Key facts:
- Tokenization turns claims on real-world assets like stocks, bonds, funds, and gold grams into blockchain tokens. This action lets investors hold pieces of assets and settle trades at any time.
- Top tokenized assets include Treasury funds and money market items. For instance, Circle’s USYC product holds nearly $3 billion, BlackRock’s BUIDL counts about $2.4 billion, and Franklin Templeton’s BENJI has roughly $821 million.
- On-chain equities jumped to nearly $963 million in market value by January 2026. XStocks has the most holders and Ondo Global Markets holds the highest value.
- Hyperliquid launched the HIP-3 market for tokenized private company prices in October 2025. In a few days the volume grew from $100 million to $200 million, giving a challenge to old exchanges.
- Ethereum holds about half of all tokenized assets, with a total value near $16.6 billion. BNB Chain doubled its locked asset value to around $4 billion and leads in trading volume and active users.
- New tokenizations include graded Pokémon cards used as loan collateral, tokenized uranium and copper, gold and silver forever products, and Nvidia GPUs as support for AI data centers.
Why it matters:
Tokenization of real-world assets brings new cash flow, access, and chance in both old and new asset markets. It speeds up settlement and widens the group of investors. It links real-world items directly with decentralized finance networks and may change how capital markets work.
Background:
Larry Fink, BlackRock’s Chairman, said in letters from 2025 and 2026 that every old asset can become tokenized. The early use of digital bonds by the European Investment Bank and Hong Kong’s money group in 2023 set a start. In 2024, BlackRock began its BUIDL fund on Ethereum, and in 2025 the U.S. GENIUS Act created a federal plan for stablecoins. Many blockchains now work with Ethereum and BNB Chain, and new projects add more asset types on blockchain.
