Asset Classes Being Tokenized

Real estate, private credit, funds, treasuries, and private equity at a glance.

"Tokenization" is a technique, not an asset. What actually matters is which real-world assets are being wrapped in tokens today, why those specifically, and how far each category has progressed from pilot to production. Some categories already have billions of dollars on-chain and settle 24/7. Others are still mostly proof-of-concept, with more press releases than trades.

This article walks through the five categories that dominate real-world asset (RWA) tokenization today: U.S. Treasuries, private credit, real estate, funds, and private equity. For each, the picture is the same three questions: what is being tokenized, why it makes sense (or doesn't yet), and where it stands in the market.

Why these five

Every asset class that gets tokenized has to clear the same bar: is the on-chain version materially better than the off-chain one for enough of its investors to matter? "Better" usually means one or more of:

• •Faster settlement — T+0 instead of T+1/T+2, or minutes instead of weeks.
• •Lower minimums — a $50 ticket into something that used to require $250,000.
• •Broader distribution — reaching investors and jurisdictions the traditional channel could not.
• •Programmable compliance — rules enforced at the token level instead of via paperwork.
• •Composability — the tokenized asset works as collateral or a settlement leg in other on-chain systems.

The five categories below each clear that bar for a specific reason. They are also the five where actual capital has moved — not just announcements.

1. U.S. Treasuries and money-market instruments

The clear winner so far. Tokenized Treasuries went from roughly $100M in early 2023 to over $7B by mid-2025, led by BlackRock BUIDL, Franklin Templeton BENJI, Ondo OUSG / USDY, Superstate USTB, and Hashnote USYC.

• •What's tokenized: Short-duration U.S. Treasury bills, or a money-market fund holding them, wrapped as an ERC-20-compatible security token on Ethereum, Solana, or another chain.
• •Why it works:
  • - The underlying asset is already the most liquid instrument on Earth.
  • - Institutional buyers (crypto funds, DAOs, corporate treasuries) want yield-bearing dollars they can hold and move on-chain.
  • - 24/7 settlement is a genuine upgrade over T+1 wire cutoffs.
  • - Composability matters: BUIDL is accepted as collateral on Deribit and by several prime brokers; USYC is used as margin on FalconX.
• •Who buys: Almost entirely institutional. Reg D / Reg S wrappers, accredited-only, six- and seven-figure tickets.
• •Honest limits: Yield is essentially the T-bill rate minus a management fee — not exciting for anyone who is not already holding stablecoins. Retail access is minimal outside a few jurisdictions.

2. Private credit

The second-largest category and the fastest-growing. Roughly $14B of private credit is on-chain across Figure, Maple, Centrifuge, Goldfinch, Credix, and Tradable, with Figure alone accounting for the majority (HELOCs and other consumer credit).

• •What's tokenized: Loan pools — SME loans, invoice financing, trade finance, consumer credit, corporate direct lending — packaged as senior/junior tranches or single-borrower vehicles.
• •Why it works:
  • - Yields (8–15%) are meaningfully higher than Treasuries.
  • - Private credit was already a $1.5T+ market; tokenization opens it to non-institutional accredited investors who could never access it before.
  • - On-chain servicing reduces the reporting overhead that eats returns in traditional private credit funds.
• •Who buys: Accredited investors, crypto-native yield seekers, and increasingly institutional allocators using tokenized vehicles as an operational efficiency play.
• •Honest limits: Credit risk is real. The Goldfinch and Maple defaults of 2022–2023 showed that on-chain packaging does not underwrite the borrower. Diligence still matters, and tokenization does not fix bad underwriting — it just makes it faster to distribute.

3. Real estate

The most-discussed, least-mature category. Every tokenization pitch deck for a decade has led with real estate. Actual on-chain volume is a rounding error compared to Treasuries and credit — under $500M in tokenized property, most of it in a handful of platforms: RealT (fractional U.S. rentals), Lofty (fractional single-family), Blocksquare / Brickken (commercial), RedSwan (institutional CRE), and a growing set of MENA and Asia platforms.

• •What's tokenized: Usually an SPV or LLC that owns a single property (or a small pool), with token holders receiving a pro-rata claim on rent and eventual sale proceeds. Occasionally direct fractional deeds where local law permits (Dubai is the most permissive).
• •Why it's slower:
  • - Real estate is inherently illiquid — tokenization doesn't change the underlying.
  • - Legal wrappers vary by jurisdiction; there is no clean global standard.
  • - Property management, tenant risk, and local tax reporting still need traditional operators.
  • - Secondary trading is thin; most token holders end up buy-and-hold by default.
• •Where it does work: Fractional access to institutional-quality assets (a share of a $50M multifamily building for $500), yield-bearing rental income streams to accredited investors, and jurisdictions like Dubai that have written on-chain deed transfer directly into land-registry law.

4. Funds (VC, hedge, private equity funds)

The quiet institutional workhorse. Tokenized fund shares — LP interests wrapped as security tokens — are how firms like Hamilton Lane, KKR, Apollo, WisdomTree, and Franklin Templeton are actually using this technology. Combined tokenized fund AUM is estimated at $2–3B and rising.

• •What's tokenized: LP interests in private funds (Hamilton Lane's Senior Credit Opportunities Fund, Apollo's Diversified Credit Fund), or wrapper share classes of registered funds, distributed via Securitize, ADDX, or iCapital + tokenization partner.
• •Why it works:
  • - Lower minimums (as low as $10,000–$20,000 vs. $5M+ traditionally).
  • - Faster subscription and redemption workflow — subscription docs replaced by on-chain KYC + whitelisting.
  • - Cleaner cap-table management for the GP; automated distributions.
  • - Some (limited) secondary liquidity via ATSs like Securitize Markets.
• •Who buys: Accredited and qualified purchasers, family offices, and increasingly the mass-affluent wealth channel via Securitize / ADDX front-ends.
• •Honest limits: These are still 10-year illiquid vehicles. Tokenization improves the plumbing, not the lockup. Secondary trading exists but is thin.

5. Private equity (direct company shares)

The smallest and hardest category. Direct tokenization of private company equity — actual shares of an operating company, not fund interests — remains rare. Notable examples: Aspen Digital / St. Regis Aspen (tokenized hotel property equity, one of the earliest), INX, and a handful of pre-IPO shares distributed via Securitize or tZERO.

• •What's tokenized: Common or preferred stock in a private company, held via SPV or (rarely) directly on the cap table.
• •Why it's hard:
  • - Cap-table complexity — preferred stacks, drag-along rights, ROFRs, and existing shareholder agreements do not translate cleanly to a token contract.
  • - Existing shareholders and boards resist letting equity move outside their approval process.
  • - The typical illiquidity discount is why private equity returns exist; making it liquid can actually hurt price discovery for early holders.
• •Where it does work: Late-stage secondary sales (employees selling pre-IPO stock via a tokenized SPV), companies raising Reg CF or Reg A+ rounds where a token wrapper is a natural fit, and jurisdictions with an on-chain share register (Switzerland, Liechtenstein).

Categories worth watching

Beyond the top five, several categories are building real, if smaller, on-chain footprints:

• •Investment-grade corporate bonds — European issuances by EIB, Siemens, and others on public and private chains.
• •Carbon credits — mostly voluntary market (Toucan, Flowcarbon, KlimaDAO); a compliance-market layer is emerging.
• •Commodities — tokenized gold (PAXG, XAUT) is the mature case; oil, agricultural products remain experimental.
• •Art and collectibles — fractional ownership via Masterworks, Particle, and Freeport; niche but real.
• •Intellectual property and royalties — music (ANote, Royal), film, and pharma royalty streams; early but structurally interesting.

The pattern across all of them

Two observations cut across every category above.

First: liquidity comes from the underlying, not the wrapper. Treasuries were liquid; tokenized Treasuries are liquid. Private equity was illiquid; tokenized private equity is illiquid. Tokenization improves settlement, minimums, and access — it does not manufacture buyers.

Second: the winners are boring. The largest, fastest-growing tokenized categories are Treasuries and private credit — instruments already understood by institutional allocators, with clear pricing and clean cash flows. The categories that dominated the 2018–2020 tokenization narrative (fractional real estate, art, collectibles) have moved much slower. That is a feature of a maturing market, not a failure — it just means the story is quieter and more institutional than the original retail-democratization pitch.

What to expect over the next 24 months

The near-term trajectory is easy to sketch:

• •Treasuries and money-market instruments continue to compound as more corporate treasuries, DAOs, and crypto funds default to on-chain cash management.
• •Private credit grows faster than any other category as yield-seeking capital finds it and as institutional issuers standardize on ERC-3643 / ERC-1400.
• •Fund tokenization goes mainstream in the wealth channel — expect several major asset managers to launch tokenized share classes as a default offering.
• •Real estate stays fragmented — a lot of small platforms, a few institutional wins, no dominant venue.
• •Private equity remains bespoke and slow, with the most progress in pre-IPO secondaries.

The takeaway for anyone building, investing, or issuing: pick the category where the on-chain version is already better today, not the one that sounds most exciting on a slide. The market is voting with real capital, and the ranking above is what it is voting for.