2026: The Year of Tokenization

First off, I just wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Wishing all of you far and wide all the best for the year ahead. I’m not a big words of affirmation person, but I’d like to say I’m simpatico. I will, however, quote a line from Fantastic Mr. fox: “The views are better above ground.” When I came across this quote, it resonated with me ever since, meaning to me there’s more to explore and discover in this life, drawing parallels to the philosophical story of the Allegory of the Cave by Plato.

Wow, that was deep, wasn’t it? Now let’s get on to the article eh?

Well, at the backend of a rollercoaster 2025 in the crypto industry especially with the rise of institutional adoption, there was a growing theme quietly brewing during Q3 ’25. And you’ve guessed it, tokenization. Many insituational players were already gearing up on crypto, one of the most prominent examples being BlackRock (of the biggest Asset Managers in the world), with **$13.5 Trillion in AUM to date, also launching BUIDL : **a tokenized money market fund launched on the Ethereum blokckhain, plus ETF’s tracking both Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Notably, it’s been no suprise crypto and traditonal finance (TradFi), haven’t seen eye to eye, well I’m going to spare you the details but soley this is because crypto is purely decentralized, specifically DeFi and with TradFi it relies heavily on structure, bureaucracy and intermediaries. The main and plain reason.

So what is Tokenization? And why Now?

Before we go into the why, let’s first look at this on the base layer, let’s ask ourselves: what is Tokenization?

Tokenization is simply the conversion of an asset, or rights to an asset, also known as Real World Assets (RWAs) into a digital token onto the blockchain, even suprisingly real estate. Especially in this specific case of financial assets such as on-chain US Treasuries. Now, the main reason why? Traditional financial assets have massive insuffiencies. For instance if you wanted to a buy a US Treasury bond, you’d need to go through a broker and opeate within market hours. With tokenization this is settled almost instantaneously, and more importantly, it makes Illiquid assets more accesible and tradeable.

Image sourced from — FinanceFeeds

Is there product market for this financial concept?!

YES, YES and yes :)

Ondo Finance arguably the leading market leader in tokenzation bridges TradFi and Defi by tokenizing RWAs such as US Treasuries and money market funds into on-chain digital prodcuts for investors. I’ll cover Ondo Finance in a future article and dive specifically into how they’re making this happen. On the the other end of the tokenziation spectrum there is Securitize.io, which focus on the regulatory compliance and institutional adpotion.

However, It’s not all sunshine and rainbows as China is not “buillish” on RWAs, citing them as “illegal finance”. Without getting too politcal here, the Chinese rhetoric is that RWAs pose a huge finanical risk and bypass traditional banking oversight and practisces. In particularly the People’s Bank of China one of the most powerful central banks in the world, which has overseen the chinese traditonal finance system since 1948.

An image of the Bank Of China London Branch.

And to conclude, that is it for this article. 2026 has been earmaked as the year for tokenization, as crypto looks to move up “another level” in insituational adoption. However, as briefly noted, there is still some resistance and cautiousness around this concept, which is expcted as banking praticses differ across the globe.

Let me know in the comments:

What are your thoughts on the tokenization landscape for this year and beyond?

Have you already particpated in the ecoystem?

What are your main worries?

Til next time.

Tokenization #OndoFinance #BlackRock #Securitize #RWA