Tokenised Assets Hit $4T by 2028 — BlackRock, Standard Chartered Lead
Two of the most powerful names in global finance just placed their biggest bets yet on the same idea — and the number they are both pointing to is $4 trillion.
In May 2026, Standard Chartered published a landmark research note projecting that tokenised assets will reach $4 trillion on blockchain networks by the end of 2028. One week earlier, BlackRock filed two new on-chain fund products with the US Securities and Exchange Commission — the most aggressive single-day push into tokenized finance from any traditional asset manager in history. Together, these two developments mark the clearest signal yet that RWA tokenization has moved from pilot project to production infrastructure.
Here is everything you need to understand—what it is, who is driving it, what the numbers actually mean, and what risks remain.
Before the numbers make sense, the terminology needs to be clear.
A real-world asset is any traditional financial instrument—a US Treasury bond, a corporate bond, a money-market fund share, a real estate title, a commodity—that has been represented as a digital token on a blockchain network. The token is the claim. The underlying asset stays in a regulated custody structure.
Tokenized Treasuries are blockchain-based digital representations of traditional US Treasury securities. They hold actual Treasury bills or bonds in a regulated structure and issue tokens on a blockchain that represent ownership claims. These tokens can be traded 24 hours a day, seven days a week; settled almost instantly; and integrated with smart contracts—while still earning the yield from the underlying Treasuries.
The efficiency gain is the point. Traditional fund settlement takes one to two business days through multiple intermediaries. On-chain settlement can compress that to near-zero. The same position can generate yield, serve as collateral in a DeFi lending protocol, and remain tradable—simultaneously. Off-chain, those three functions require separate legal agreements and separate intermediaries.
Standard Chartered describes this property as "composability"—the ability of the same on-chain position to simultaneously earn yield, serve as collateral, and remain tradable without the multiple intermediaries found in traditional finance. Composability gives leading DeFi protocols a structural advantage that traditional finance cannot replicate.
Standard Chartered Bank published its forecast on May 18, 2026. The report, led by Geoffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research, projects $4 trillion in tokenised assets on blockchain networks by end-2028—split evenly between stablecoins at $2 trillion and tokenized real-world assets at $2 trillion, with DeFi protocols expected to become core infrastructure for that capital.
The scale of that projection requires context. Tokenized assets were most recently valued at $34 billion at the time of publication, while the stablecoin sector market cap stood at $318 billion. Standard Chartered estimates roughly 1,000 times more value sits off-chain than on-chain today.
The report identifies three channels for higher DeFi throughput. First, more assets moving on-chain. Second, a larger share of those on-chain assets being deposited into DeFi protocol markets. Third, increased lending against on-chain holdings. Standard Chartered describes these three drivers as multiplicative—meaning their interaction compounds the growth effect rather than adding linearly.
The Standard Chartered forecast comes with one important caveat on chain selection. DeFi protocols — not Ethereum or Solana specifically — will be the primary beneficiaries, according to Kendrick. The throughput will land on DeFi protocols that can scale safely. This is a meaningful distinction: the forecast is bullish on the infrastructure layer, not any specific public chain.
Standard Chartered also highlighted that passage of the US Clarity Act would be a significant catalyst for further on-chaining of traditional financial assets—accelerating the timeline rather than changing the direction.
BlackRock's move is where institutional adoption becomes concrete.
On May 8, 2026, BlackRock filed two new fund applications with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, adding to its existing BUIDL fund — the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund — which launched in March 2024 and has grown to approximately $2.5 billion in assets under management.
The first filing outlines the BlackRock Daily Reinvestment Stablecoin Reserve Vehicle — a fund designed to hold cash, short-term US Treasury securities, and overnight repurchase agreements backed by Treasuries. The fund would issue what BlackRock calls "OnChain Shares" through a framework linked to multiple public blockchains, with Securitize Transfer Agent LLC serving as the official transfer agent. The second filing proposes a tokenized share class of the BlackRock Select Treasury-Based Liquidity Fund—an existing $7 billion money-market fund that would gain on-chain distribution capability.
Entry into the new stablecoin reserve vehicle requires a $3 million minimum investment, restricting access to institutional buyers. Neither product has received SEC approval as of the filing date.
The strategic logic is explicit. BlackRock's objective is to capture idle stablecoin capital—providing a pathway for institutions to earn US Treasury yield without exiting the blockchain environment for traditional settlement rails. Stablecoin issuers sitting on billions in reserves currently earn little or nothing on those reserves. The BlackRock products give them a compliant, yield-bearing on-chain alternative.
Kendrick cited BlackRock's existing BUIDL fund as proof of concept. The $2.85 billion tokenized Treasury fund earns Treasury yield, converts to sBUIDL for DeFi compatibility, and serves as core reserve collateral for Ethena's USDtb and Ondo's OUSG—demonstrating how a single tokenized asset can function across multiple DeFi ecosystems simultaneously.
The demand for RWA tokenization is pulling DeFi protocols into institutional territory — not the other way around.
Aave, the largest DeFi lending protocol, has ranked as high as 38th against US banks by assets, with on-chain stablecoin lending volume running at $1.5 billion to $2 billion per day and average loan sizes increasing. The Coinbase-Morpho Bitcoin lending product illustrates how TradFi institutions are plugging into DeFi as back-end infrastructure rather than building from scratch — Coinbase handles the front end and custody while Morpho provides the lending logic, liquidation engine, and capital pool.
BlackRock has expanded BUIDL's reach beyond its original blockchain home, making the fund accessible on BNB Chain and Solana. The firm has also partnered with Securitize and Uniswap Labs to enable on-chain trading of BUIDL, while integration with DeFi lending platform Euler further extends BUIDL's utility — allowing tokenized shares to be used as collateral for borrowing or as a yield-bearing asset within lending pools.
Tokenised treasuries now represent the fastest-growing category in the RWA space. The tokenized US Treasury market reached $14 billion as of May 2026—tripling in one year — with Ethereum hosting more than $8 billion of that total.
Binance Research projected tokenized assets could reach $1.6 trillion by 2030, with Treasury products, gold-backed commodities, and tokenized public equities among the clearest adoption areas. The tokenized RWA market reached at least $34.5 billion in May 2026, after roughly 100% year-over-year growth.
The trajectory is clear. The regulatory path is not yet fully paved.
In the United States, the GENIUS Act—passed in 2026—establishes the first comprehensive federal framework for stablecoins and payment tokens. The regulatory landscape for tokenized assets has been transformed by the passage of the GENIUS Act, which establishes the first comprehensive federal framework for stablecoins and payment tokens—providing the legal clarity that institutional issuers have been waiting for.
The Clarity Act, still moving through Congress, would go further—providing a framework for tokenized securities that currently sit in a regulatory gray area between SEC and CFTC jurisdiction.
In Europe, MiCA regulation provides the clearest existing framework for crypto-asset issuance — but tokenized securities remain under traditional securities law, requiring existing fund structures to be adapted rather than replaced. Asia presents a fragmented picture: Singapore's MAS has been the most permissive major regulator, while Hong Kong has moved aggressively to attract RWA issuers through its licensed framework.
The custody gap remains the most practical near-term obstacle. Most institutional-grade custody infrastructure was built for traditional assets — not on-chain tokens with 24/7 settlement and DeFi integration. KYC requirements for DeFi protocol participation remain unsolved for regulated institutions in most jurisdictions
For institutional treasury managers, the yield comparison is straightforward.
The BlackRock BUIDL fund offers investors approximately 4% yield, trades around the clock, and is highly liquid—properties that Kendrick sees as attracting more institutional investors in the next few years.
Traditional money-market funds offer comparable yields but settle in T+1 or T+2, cannot be used as DeFi collateral, and require traditional brokerage infrastructure. Tokenized alternatives match the yield while adding instant settlement, 24/7 availability, and on-chain composability as structural enhancements.
The yield advantage narrows as more capital enters the space—more buyers for tokenized Treasuries means tighter spreads. But the settlement and composability advantages are structural, not yield-dependent. This is why Standard Chartered's forecast is not primarily about yield arbitrage — it is about the efficiency gains of blockchain settlement becoming the standard infrastructure for institutional-grade fixed income.
The $4 trillion projection for tokenised assets by 2028 is not a speculative forecast from a crypto-native source. It comes from Standard Chartered's global head of digital assets research, is corroborated by BlackRock's May 2026 SEC filings, and is grounded in a tokenized Treasury market that has already tripled to $14 billion in one year.
RWA tokenisation is moving from pilot to production. The efficiency gains — instant blockchain settlement, 24/7 trading, DeFi composability as DeFi collateral — are structural advantages that traditional finance cannot replicate on legacy rails. The risks are equally real: custody infrastructure gaps, KYC requirements for DeFi participation, and regulatory fragmentation across major jurisdictions all remain unsolved.
The institutions building now — BlackRock, Standard Chartered, Aave, Morpho, Ondo — are not waiting for those gaps to close before moving. They are building around them. By 2028, the question may not be whether tokenised assets reach $4 trillion. It may be whether that number was set too low.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, or legal advice. Cryptocurrency, DeFi, and tokenised assets involve significant market, regulatory, and technological risks.
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