It’s time for tokenization to get to work
Tokenization grew up in 2026, now it has to get to work. Key takeaways from TokenizeThis 2026, where the debate shifted from whether real-world assets belong on-chain to whether anyone is actually using them.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Tokenized real-world assets have pushed past $30 billion, and 64% of asset managers now want to tokenize, up from 40% a year earlier. Regulation is why the mood changed from last year, with the GENIUS Act giving payment stablecoins legitimacy and the CLARITY Act opening the door to the full range of asset classes.
Imagine you have a big box of toys, and you want to sell some of them to your friends. Tokenization is like putting a special sticker on each toy so that it can be easily sold and traded. This makes it easier for people to buy and sell the toys, and it helps to make sure that everyone gets a fair price.
Analysis
Tokenization Grew Up in 2026, Now It Has to Get to Work
Tokenization has come a long way in 2026, shifting from a debate about whether real-world assets belong on-chain to a discussion about whether anyone is actually using them. The conversation at TokenizeThis 2026 reflected this shift, with speakers emphasizing the need for real-world utility over hype. Tokenized real-world assets have pushed past $30 billion, and 64% of asset managers now want to tokenize, up from 40% a year earlier. Regulation is why the mood changed from last year, with the GENIUS Act giving payment stablecoins legitimacy and the CLARITY Act opening the door to the full range of asset classes.
Cash and Collateral Are the Beachheads
Collateral is where tokenization earns its keep first. On the repo panel, Broadridge's Robert Krugman said his firm now moves around $370 billion of tokenized repo a day on the Canton network. That is a sliver of the $12 trillion US repo market, but a real one, and the programmability pitch is simple. "If you want to borrow for five minutes, you pay for five minutes [instead of a full day]. It's a no-brainer," said Ami Ben-David, CEO at Ownera. Asset managers echoed utility over novelty. A recurring principle was that if you tokenize a product, it has to be a net better product than the one it replaces. Apollo's Christine Moy said the firm's tokenized private credit fund has confirmed what she calls the "superpowers" of onchain assets: secondary liquidity for otherwise illiquid products, and the ability to post private credit as collateral in DeFi protocols like Aave and Morpho.
The Gap Between Minting and Utility
What is still broken? Plenty, and panelists said so. Distribution first. Moy's point was that the next wave of investors started with bitcoin and a cartoon monkey, not a blue-chip stock, and you meet them in their wallet. Maple has taken that literally, originating loans on-chain in stablecoins. There’s also a challenge in compliance. Fidelity's Jasmine Jia described a manager thrown into a scramble when a client received a token as an airdrop, a trivial sum that still tripped internal alarms and put compliance modernization on the agenda. The earlier-mentioned survey backed her up, with 49% naming the integration of blockchain into traditional portfolio and risk frameworks as their biggest readiness gap.
Key points
- Tokenized real-world assets have pushed past $30 billion.
- 64% of asset managers now want to tokenize, up from 40% a year earlier.
- Regulation is why the mood changed from last year, with the GENIUS Act giving payment stablecoins legitimacy and the CLARITY Act opening the door to the full range of asset classes.
- Collateral is where tokenization earns its keep first.
- The industry's failure to solve the infrastructure gaps could lead to a lack of adoption and growth, and the market could become fragmented and less liquid.
If the industry can solve the remaining infrastructure gaps, tokenization could unlock a new phase of institutional adoption, leading to increased adoption and growth in the market.
The industry's failure to solve the infrastructure gaps could lead to a lack of adoption and growth, and the market could become fragmented and less liquid.
