The marketplace for tokenized real-world property (RWAs) – excluding stablecoins – might surge to $2 trillion by 2028, up from roughly $35 billion at present, in keeping with a brand new report from Normal Chartered Financial institution.
The projection represents a possible 5,600% enhance as conventional monetary merchandise more and more transfer onchain.
Stablecoins Paved the Method for Broader Tokenization
“Stablecoins have laid the groundwork for different asset courses — from tokenized cash market funds to tokenized equities — to scale onchain,” mentioned Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital property analysis at Normal Chartered. Kendrick highlighted that stablecoins have boosted consciousness, liquidity, and onchain lending, all of which now assist the tokenization of extra complicated monetary devices.
Kendrick expects Ethereum to stay the dominant platform for this progress, citing its decade-long uptime document and reliability. “The truth that different chains are quicker or cheaper is irrelevant, in our view,” he mentioned.
Normal Chartered estimates that by 2028, tokenized cash market funds and listed equities will every account for about $750 billion of the overall $2 trillion market, whereas tokenized funds and fewer liquid property reminiscent of non-public fairness, commodities, and actual property will make up the remaining $500 billion.
DeFi’s Subsequent Part: Lending and RWAs
In keeping with Kendrick, decentralized finance (DeFi) is coming into a brand new stage of improvement. “Stablecoins have created the preconditions for a broader enlargement of DeFi,” he mentioned, pointing to elevated liquidity and lending exercise in fiat-pegged merchandise as key drivers.
He argued that lending and tokenized RWAs are the 2 areas the place DeFi can meaningfully disrupt conventional finance (TradFi). If these property grow to be tradable on decentralized exchanges, “this will present a possibility for disruption to inventory exchanges,” Kendrick added.
The report notes that current U.S. laws – together with the GENIUS Act handed in July 2025 — has already offered regulatory readability for stablecoins, accelerating institutional and retail adoption. The upcoming Digital Asset Market Readability Act, anticipated by early 2026, might additional legitimize asset tokenization, DeFi lending, and decentralized buying and selling.
Kendrick cautioned, nevertheless, that the primary danger can be if U.S. regulatory readability fails to materialize earlier than the 2026 midterm elections. Nonetheless, he known as that “not our base case,” sustaining {that a} self-sustaining cycle of DeFi progress has already begun.
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