Wall Street’s Stealth On-Chain Invasion: Tokenized Assets Surge Toward $300B

Traditional finance giants are quietly dumping legacy systems—and piling into blockchain.

The numbers don't lie: nearly $300 billion in real-world assets now live on-chain. From BlackRock's tokenized funds to JPMorgan's blockchain corridors, the old guard's playing catch-up with DeFi's pioneers.

Why the sudden rush? Try cost-cutting settlement times from days to minutes. Or 24/7 markets that don't care about banker's holidays. The irony? These same institutions spent years dismissing crypto as a 'fraud.'

One hedge fund MD put it bluntly: 'We're not here for the ideology—we're here because it's cheaper.' At least the suits finally admit blockchain beats fax machines.

The growth of tokenized U.S. Treasuries has emerged as a defining feature of this market. The segment surpassed $5 billion in March and now measures close to $7.3 billion in outstanding value.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund represents the largest share, with roughly $2.4 billion, followed by Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, at about $700 million, while Ondo’s OUSG and other vehicles, including USYC, JTRSY, and USTB, round out the leading issuers.

This movement of short-term debt on the chain has accelerated in a high-interest-rate environment, drawing capital toward tokenized money-market funds and Treasury products.

Tokenized Treasury and money-market mutual fund assets ROSE nearly 80% year to date, reaching $7.4 billion by mid-summer. Market participants increasingly use these products for yield capture and settlement efficiency, with institutional issuers anchoring adoption.

Integrating BlackRock and Franklin into on-chain infrastructure illustrates how traditional finance firms use tokenization for capital markets operations beyond pilot programs. These tokenized funds function as yield-bearing stablecoin alternatives, attracting capital that may otherwise remain in non-interest-bearing stablecoin formats.

Stablecoins continue to dominate the landscape with nearly $267 billion in value and more than 189 million holders globally, according to RWA.xyz. The sector remains the entry point to tokenized finance while indirectly supporting the Treasury market through reserve allocations.

The scale of stablecoin holdings has created a structural bid in short-term U.S. government securities, reinforcing their connection to traditional financial markets. This demand channel links on-chain activity to systemic funding markets and elevates the policy considerations surrounding stablecoin regulation.

The diversification of tokenized assets beyond stablecoins highlights further adoption. Data shows smaller but steady issuance across private credit, institutional funds, commodities, and corporate debt instruments.

While ethereum holds more than half of the non-stablecoin RWA share, networks such as ZKsync, Solana, Stellar, and Aptos are capturing portions of issuance, reflecting the infrastructure spread. These developments suggest tokenization is functioning as both a settlement infrastructure and a means of structuring regulated financial products on public ledgers.

Institutional entry has been accompanied by exploration from banks and custodians, with settlement portability and collateral efficiency identified as primary drivers.

While not all initiatives occur on public blockchains, the continued development of tokenized rails illustrates how traditional finance and crypto-native products are converging around the same operational mechanisms.

The distinction between stablecoins as transactional units and tokenized funds as yield-generating products will remain central to how investors allocate across these categories.

Tokenized assets approaching $300 billion marks a transition from concept to operating infrastructure.

The scale now reflects not only retail payments through stablecoins but also institutionally managed capital in regulated securities, suggesting that tokenization is already a live component of global financial plumbing rather than a speculative frontier.