Tokenized traditional assets exceed $35B onchain, nearly tripling in about a year

The market for tokenized traditional assets, excluding stablecoins, has blown past $35 billion in total onchain value. That’s nearly three times what it was when the GENIUS Act was signed into law in July 2025, a pace of growth that makes most corners of crypto look sleepy by comparison.

The data, shared by a16z crypto and sourced from rwa.xyz, paints a picture of institutional capital flowing into blockchain-based versions of assets that have existed for decades. US Treasury products dominate the landscape. Commodities, primarily gold, account for roughly $5 to $6 billion of the total. Private credit rounds out the mix.

From regulatory clarity to capital deployment

The GENIUS Act didn’t directly regulate tokenized real-world assets. It established a federal framework for payment stablecoins. But in doing so, it removed a layer of ambiguity around the settlement rails that tokenized assets depend on.

To appreciate the trajectory, consider that in mid-2024, the entire non-stablecoin tokenized asset market sat below $3 billion. By mid-2026, it had grown more than tenfold. The jump from roughly $12 billion at the time of the GENIUS Act’s signing to north of $35 billion today represents a near tripling in a little over a year.

The Clarity Act looms as the next inflection point

The Clarity Act, expected to face a vote around mid-September 2026, aims to provide further regulatory precision for digital asset transactions more broadly. Where the GENIUS Act focused on stablecoins, the Clarity Act would address the tokenized assets themselves.

Even at $35 billion, the tokenized asset market remains a rounding error compared to the traditional financial system. US Treasuries alone have a market value north of $25 trillion. Gold markets dwarf the $5 to $6 billion that’s been tokenized. Private credit is a multi-trillion dollar asset class globally.

What institutional adoption actually looks like

Tokenized Treasuries in particular have benefited from a compelling value proposition. Traditional Treasury settlement takes a day. Onchain settlement can happen in minutes. For institutions managing billions in short-duration fixed income, that difference in settlement time translates directly into capital efficiency.

Gold tokenization has followed a similar logic but with an added wrinkle. Physical gold is expensive to store, insure, and transport. A tokenized representation that’s redeemable for the underlying metal strips away most of those friction costs while preserving the asset’s role as a portfolio hedge.

Private credit, the third major category, appeals to a different set of buyers. These are typically higher-yield instruments that have historically been illiquid and difficult to access for all but the largest allocators. Tokenization introduces fractional ownership and secondary market trading, making the asset class accessible to a broader investor base.

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