Researching the market size of tokenised real-world assets turns up figures between 19 billion and 1.24 trillion US dollars. That is a factor of more than sixty. Before any of these numbers can be quoted, it must be clear what each one measures.
Why the figures diverge so widely
Three different quantities are routinely conflated.
On-chain market capitalisation of tokenised assets. This is the value of tokens actually issued on public blockchains. According to CoinGecko's RWA Report 2026, that figure stood at 19.3 billion US dollars at the end of the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 256.7 percent within fifteen months.
Total value locked in the RWA sector. This additionally captures capital bound in associated protocols and exceeded 31 billion US dollars in 2026, up from 7.8 billion at the start of 2025.
The aggregate sector value per rwa.xyz. That dataset showed a volume of 38.17 billion US dollars on 9 August 2026, leaving 1.83 billion short of the 40 billion mark.
The cited figure of 1.24 trillion US dollars comes from a source evidently measuring a different category — probably tokenised assets in the broadest sense, including privately operated, non-public registers. It is not comparable with the three quantities above and should not be used alongside on-chain data.
In practice: anyone reading an RWA figure should check whether market capitalisation, TVL or a broader aggregate is meant. Otherwise one is comparing different things.
What is happening inside the on-chain segment
The composition has shifted.
Tokenised government bonds remain the dominant asset class. They added 9 billion US dollars in market capitalisation, a gain of 225.5 percent, and crossed the 10 billion mark for the first time on 11 February 2026. Notably, their share of the overall segment nonetheless fell from 73.7 to 67.2 percent — other classes grew faster.
Tokenised commodities rose 289 percent, from 1.43 to 5.55 billion US dollars. That was driven almost entirely by gold-backed tokens: Tether's XAUT and Paxos' PAXG together accounted for 89.1 percent of the expansion. Spot trading volume for tokenised gold reached 90.7 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2026 alone, surpassing the 84.6 billion traded across all of 2025.
Tokenised equities launched in mid-2025 at 2 million US dollars and reached 486 million by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
Who is involved
More than forty large financial institutions now actively issue tokenised products on public blockchains. Those named include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JPMorgan, Citadel Securities and Société Générale.
Two developments from the first quarter of 2026 are structurally interesting. BlackRock's BUIDL fund was listed on Uniswap, connecting a regulated fund with a decentralised exchange for the first time. Franklin Templeton, together with Ondo Finance, launched five tokenised ETFs intended to be tradable around the clock through crypto wallets.
At the same time the sector remains structurally concentrated. For BUIDL, a substantial share sits with the ten largest holders. A high absolute market capitalisation says little about the breadth of participation in these products.
The point that is decisive in Germany and the EU
This is where German-language coverage most often goes wrong: tokenisation is treated as part of the MiCAR story. In most cases that is incorrect.
MiCAR covers crypto-assets that specifically are not financial instruments. As soon as a token securitises a security — a fund unit, a bond, a share — MiCAR does not apply; securities law does, which in the EU means MiFID II and prospectus obligations in particular. ESMA has published its own guidelines on the classification of crypto-assets as financial instruments to draw this line.
In Germany the Electronic Securities Act adds a further layer, enabling the issuance of electronic bonds and fund units in a crypto securities register.
Two practical consequences follow. First: a provider's MiCAR licence says nothing about whether it may offer tokenised securities. Second — and this is the good news for investors: regulated tokenised securities are subject to the same investor protection rules as their conventional counterparts, including prospectus and disclosure obligations.
That is also where the boundary to the grey capital market runs. Offerings promising a stake in property or companies while falling under neither securities law nor investment product rules are no improvement on conventional grey-market offerings simply because a token is involved.
Assessment for retail investors
Initial regulated products exist, principally tokenised bonds and money market funds. For most retail investors, however, tokenisation in 2026 is not a core holding but at most a small, well-understood addition.
The reason is market structure more than technology. Secondary markets for most tokenised assets are still thin. An asset that can be bought but in case of doubt sold only at a discount, or not at all, carries a liquidity risk that does not appear in yield figures.
Forecasts of market size to 2030 or 2033 circulate widely and come predominantly from consultancies and market participants with their own interests. They are expectations, not data.
This article is for information purposes and does not constitute investment advice.