As of now, the total market value of on-chain real-world assets (RWA) has surpassed $25 billion, marking an important milestone in the integration of blockchain and traditional finance. There are discrepancies in the statistical criteria for this figure: some statistics include bank-issued permissioned tokens or private chain assets, while mainstream analysis focuses more on verifiable tokenized assets on public chains, so methodological differences should be noted when interpreting this data.
In the current market, the tokenization of U.S. Treasury bonds has become the primary pathway for institutions to enter the on-chain ecosystem. Through closed pools that require KYC certification and whitelist mechanisms, investors can access highly liquid, low-risk on-chain U.S. Treasury bond assets. These tokenized products achieve T+0 settlement, transparent and traceable on-chain records, and significantly enhance asset liquidity management efficiency.
However, liquidity distribution remains uneven. Trading is highly concentrated among authorized institutional participants, and the depth of the secondary market is limited by custody requirements, identity verification processes, and insufficient interoperability between platforms. Currently, there is no unified cross-platform trading standard, which restricts larger-scale market expansion.
Large financial institutions are gradually increasing their involvement. BlackRock has publicly expressed strategic interest in RWA tokenization, while Citigroup predicts that by 2034, the total global market for tokenized assets could reach $30 trillion, but this goal heavily relies on the clarification of regulatory frameworks and the enhancement of infrastructure interoperability.
Among the currently dominant categories of RWA, U.S. Treasury bonds lead by a wide margin, followed by private credit, real estate, and commodities. It is noteworthy that fiat-collateralized stablecoins are typically not included in RWA statistics, as they are considered part of the underlying payment infrastructure.
From a regulatory perspective, U.S. regulators have clearly stated that tokenized securities still fall under the category of securities and must comply with the requirements of the Securities Act, including registration or applicable exemption clauses, full disclosure of information, support from qualified custodians, management of investor suitability, and compliance restrictions on trading and transfer. This means that any tokenized project involving equity-type assets must build a complete compliance framework to operate legally.