Standard Chartered: Tokenized RWAs Could Hit $2T by 2028

Standard Chartered projects that tokenized real-world assets represented on blockchains could reach $2 trillion by 2028. The bank cites rising institutional adoption, improved infrastructure and stronger demand for faster settlement and deeper liquidity as the main drivers.

The bank expects the fastest growth in tokenized funds, bonds, private credit and alternative assets. Standard Chartered identified markets that suffer from slow settlement and thin liquidity as likely candidates for on-chain issuance and trading.

Industry executives have described tokenization as a major change for securities markets. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said ‘The next generation for markets, the next generation for securities, will be tokenization of securities.’ Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated ‘everything that can be tokenized, will be.’ Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has written that blockchains create the most value when they represent real economic activity. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has suggested tokenization could free up ‘trillions of dollars’ of currently illiquid value.

Banks, asset managers and exchanges are building shared systems to support tokenized assets. Standard Chartered has worked with BlackRock and crypto exchange OKX on frameworks intended to allow tokenized fund shares to be used as collateral. Those efforts aim to let institutional participants originate, custody and transfer tokenized securities within existing regulatory and operational workflows.

Tokenization can enable fractional ownership of private credit funds, government securities and real-estate-linked instruments, which could broaden access for smaller investors. Retail access will depend on the development of compliant platforms and regulatory decisions across jurisdictions, which remain uneven.

Most analysts expect tokenization to develop alongside traditional finance, with banks retaining central roles because of regulatory ties and client relationships while blockchain networks handle more settlement and issuance tasks over time. Adoption is expected to be incremental and to vary by region and asset class.

Standard Chartered noted the projected $2 trillion figure depends on rules, common technical standards, platform development and the willingness of institutions to integrate tokenized instruments into existing capital markets.