RWA Smashes Records: Assets Under Management Hit All-Time High in 2025
Real World Assets (RWA) just bulldozed through another milestone—assets under management soaring to unprecedented heights. Forget ''steady growth''—this is a full-throttle capital invasion into tokenized traditional assets.
Wall Street''s worst-kept secret? The smart money''s been quietly piling into RWAs while VCs were still arguing about JPEG valuations. Tokenized treasuries, real estate, and commodities are eating traditional finance''s lunch—one blockchain settlement at a time.
The kicker? This ATH comes despite legacy banks'' desperate attempts to pretend DeFi is ''just a phase.'' Too bad their 19th-century infrastructure can''t compete with 24/7 settlements and transparent yields.
Ondo remains one of the leaders in creating tokenized assets, along with BlackRock as the issuer of BUIDL tokens on Ethereum. | Source: Dune Analytics
BUIDL now expanded to 49 holders, spreading within the crypto ecosystem. The supply remains under 500K tokens, created after on-demand issuance from specific known protocols. BUIDL is still not circulating like a regular token, as there are no rules on trading RWA on the open market.
Based on the latest data, tokenized RWA products are used in lending, securing over $648M in DeFi loans. Currently, RWA is still testing out its use cases and working out a standard. Recently, Coinbase applied with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer tokenized stocks and other assets. Other exchanges and DEX offer RWA with no permission and no clear reporting and transparency requirements.
RWA tokens mostly tap debt
The profile of RWA tokens shows most of the mints are linked to debt instruments for their predictable passive income. Tokenization has not delivered the promised expansion of multiple types of assets or alternative investments, including stocks, real estate, or commodities.
Currently, tokenized private debt and US T-bills are the main basis of value for issuing tokens. ethereum remains the busiest chain for RWA transfers and some decentralized activity.
The one big exception is tokenized gold, where Tether is the monopolist with XAUt. However, most of the DeFi and lending activity is linked to short-term US Government debt.
RWA tokens are also found in over 206K wallets in 2025, double the number of holders from 2024. A total of 533,606 addresses interacted with RWA tokens in some capacity to date.
Despite the asset growth, RWA tokens have been sliding for the past year. RWA tokens are valued at a total $36B, with drops over 15% in the past week. The selection of tokens includes leaders like chainlink (LINK) and Ondo (Ondo), following the crash of the Movement (MOVE) project.
RWA narrative tokens still have on average 28% returns since 2023. The tokens are also in the green for the past six months.
Cryptopolitan Academy: Tired of market swings? Learn how DeFi can help you build steady passive income. Register Now
