Keyrock, a global crypto investment firm leading in market making, OTC, and options trading for digital assets, and Centrifuge, the platform for onchain finance, have released The Great Tokenization Shift: 2025 and the Road Ahead – a report that analyzes the transformative impact of tokenization across financial markets and asset types.
Although tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) is gaining traction across financial markets, with a leading example in stablecoins having grown into a $210+ billion market, its adoption patterns differ greatly across asset classes such as U.S. Treasuries, private credit, equities, stocks, and commodities.
The report provides specific insight into each of these asset classes from a technological, regulatory, and market perspective, with the following widespread themes across them all:
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Efficiency and distribution gains enabled by the technological advancement in tokenizing assets
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Increased adoption via regulatory frameworks and favorable US political climate
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Increase in institutional participation and uptake from traditional finance players
“All assets will eventually be tokenized. This is not a matter of philosophy, simply an economically superior way of representing value,” says Kevin de Patoul, CEO, Keyrock. “All other things being equal, a digital asset is superior to a traditional one because it is a lot easier and a lot more efficient to exchange, transfer, and store.”
Tokenization of RWAs is set to gain significant momentum and have a breakout year in 2025. With the report’s predictions aggregated, it forecasts a bull case scenario seeing tokenized RWAs increase to around $50B (from under $20B) and a base case, still extremely positive, predicting an increase to $30B.
Key findings per asset class include:
- US Treasuries: Beyond stablecoins, onchain real-world asset value grew ~85% year-on-year in 2024 to reach $15.2 billion, spanning private debt, commodities, real estate, and bonds. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone surged from $1B to $4B in just nine months, driven by investors seeking onchain yields from government debt.
- Tokenized Equities: Tokenized equities, currently at ~$15 million market size, remain significantly smaller than synthetic stocks at their 2021 peak (approximately 300x larger), largely due to historical regulatory constraints (SEC Acts, MiFID II). With clearer regulatory frameworks emerging and asset-backed protocols pioneering permissionless yet compliant models, broader retail participation and institutional adoption are expected and further accelerated by political shifts beginning with the Trump administration in 2025.
- Commodities: Tokenized commodities, currently valued around $1.2 billion, have gained modest traction primarily via gold-backed tokens but face persistent liquidity constraints, price premiums up to 5%, and limited retail engagement. Regulatory simplicity compared to securities has facilitated initial growth; however, retail investors have shown stronger preference toward Bitcoin and speculative exposure rather than physically redeemable assets.
- Private Credit: Tokenized private credit –currently valued around $12.2 billion– has strong growth potential by overcoming traditional barriers like illiquidity, high minimum investments, and limited transparency. Recent institutional success and regulatory developments indicate increasing acceptance, making private credit uniquely suited to blockchain’s strengths, such as fractional ownership, improved liquidity, and enhanced transparency, positioning it thus to expand significantly.
Other contributors to the report include industry leaders such as Backed, Ondo Finance, Maple Finance, Paxos, Chainlink Labs, Plume, Securitize, and Ostium Labs. You can read the full report here and more about the analysis on Keyrock’s website here.