According to a new BeInCrypto Intelligence report, tokenization has reached approximately $60 billion in total value across more than 7,000 products and 12 asset classes, representing significant growth from earlier estimates. However, the data reveals concerning concentration issues, with just 62 assets holding 88% of total market value. The report identifies five key products that account for roughly half the market: Figure HELOC, Circle USYC, Tether Gold, BlackRock BUIDL, and Justoken JMWH. Additionally, across 1,289 tokenized assets valued above $100,000, 910 assets worth $32.9 billion showed zero weekly transfers, highlighting the market's dormant nature despite its size.
The report reveals significant barriers to retail participation, with 97% of the market sitting outside US retail reach, and only about $1.7 billion legally accessible to US retail investors. This limited access reflects ongoing regulatory and infrastructure challenges that prevent broader market participation. The findings also show that 59% of stock tokens provide synthetic price exposure rather than actual ownership of underlying shares, indicating that many tokenized products are designed for institutional use rather than public trading. As BeInCrypto reports, this creates a clear distinction between assets that are distributed and can move across public blockchain rails versus those that are represented, using blockchain mainly as a digital record of off-chain positions.
The International Monetary Fund has issued a stark warning about tokenization's potential to fundamentally reshape global finance, with Tobias Adrian, the IMF's head of monetary and capital markets, stating that policy choices made now will determine whether tokenized finance strengthens or fragments the financial system. According to the IMF's latest analysis, tokenization moves assets and liabilities onto shared digital ledgers, enabling execution, clearing, and settlement to happen simultaneously - a significant departure from traditional markets. However, this speed brings new risks as smart contracts can move payments, collateral, and ownership within moments, potentially removing traditional buffers that banks, brokers, and supervisors rely on. As Adrian warns, "Frictions disappear — but so do buffers." The IMF emphasizes that regulators must define ownership, code oversight, and settlement finality before tokenized markets scale globally, with the agency noting that without common rules, tokenization may stay split across separate systems instead of becoming a safer settlement model for global finance.
Industry executives provide nuanced perspectives on the liquidity challenges, with Tal Elyashiv of Securitize arguing that low transfer activity should not be read as failure in every case, noting that many early tokenized products were designed for institutional issuance rather than public trading. Robin Nordnes of Raiku identifies execution uncertainty as the primary barrier, explaining that institutions won't actively manage capital on-chain until they can answer "will my transaction execute, and when?" with confidence. Fred Hsu of D3 views the concentration in US Treasury debt as showing where tokenization may have the most value, as it reveals the fragmented, illiquid markets that traditional finance never priced well. Raj Kamal of TransFi argues that stablecoins represent the clearest example of tokenization solving real-world problems at scale, with billions in stablecoins facilitating remittances, B2B flows, and corporate treasury operations.
The IMF's warnings come as major U.S. banks are backing a tokenized deposit network through the Clearing House, with a launch targeted for the first half of 2027. This system would allow banks to settle tokenized deposits around the clock while keeping deposits inside the banking sector. The US GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, created federal infrastructure for payment stablecoins, with the focus now on institutional-grade tokenization requiring predictable fees, deterministic settlement and banking-grade infrastructure - capabilities most public blockchains were not designed for. The banking sector's involvement demonstrates how traditional financial institutions are moving tokenization deeper into regulated finance, representing a significant shift from experimental projects to mainstream banking applications.
According to BeInCrypto's analysis, the report does not indicate that tokenization is failing but rather shows the market is early in its structure and still building the access layer. Edwin Mata of Brickken compares this to stablecoins, noting that tokenized assets will grow when they solve practical business problems rather than simply existing on-chain. The next phase will depend on better settlement, compliance, distribution, execution, and access infrastructure. BCG and Ripple project the tokenized asset market hitting $18.9 trillion by 2033, while Standard Chartered extends that to $30 trillion by 2034 when cross-border credit is included. The distance between current projections and today's market is almost entirely a question of infrastructure - which networks can handle the volume, compliance requirements, and institutional expectations of markets that have not yet come on-chain.
