Standard Chartered sees tokenized real-world assets reaching $2 trillion by 2028 — ‘vast majority’ on Ethereum

The market cap for tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), excluding stablecoins, is expected to expand sharply to $2 trillion by 2028 from about $35 billion today — roughly a 5,600% increase, according to Standard Chartered Bank.

"Stablecoins have laid the groundwork (via increased awareness, liquidity and lending/borrowing on-chain) for other asset classes, from tokenised MMFs [money market funds] to tokenised equities, to move onchain at scale,” Geoffrey Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s head of digital assets research, said in a report on Thursday.

Kendrick expects the "vast majority" of this activity to occur on Ethereum, citing its reliability. He said Ethereum has been operating for over 10 years without a mainnet network outage. "The fact that other chains are faster or cheaper is irrelevant, in our view," he said. 

Tokenization refers to converting traditional assets into digital tokens on a blockchain, making them easier to trade and settle globally. Kendrick estimates that tokenized money market funds and listed equities will account for the largest share of the $2 trillion market by 2028, followed by tokenized funds and other less liquid instruments.

“Of this $2 trillion, we see tokenised money-market funds (driven by corporate use of stablecoins) accounting for $750 billion; tokenised listed equities (once U.S. regulations become clear and DeFi solutions are unleashed) for $750 billion, tokenised funds for $250 billion, and the less liquid segments of private equity, commodities, corporate debt and real estate for the other $250 billion,” Kendrick said.

Kendrick’s RWA forecast matches with his stablecoin market cap projection in both size and timeline.

‘DeFi is finally starting to disrupt TradFi’

Kendrick said that for its first several years, decentralized finance (DeFi) mainly enabled crypto natives to trade, borrow, and lend among themselves. But the rise of stablecoin liquidity has broadened onchain lending and borrowing activity across asset types.

“Stablecoins have created several necessary pre-conditions for a broader expansion of DeFi via the three pillars of increased public awareness, onchain liquidity, and onchain lending/borrowing activity in fiat-pegged product,” Kendrick said.

Lending and RWAs, in particular, are the two key areas where DeFi protocols can disrupt traditional finance, or TradFi, according to Kendrick. “If tokenised RWAs can be traded on DEXs [decentralized exchanges], this may provide an opportunity for disruption to stock exchanges. (In contrast, staking is unique to digital assets),” he said.

In DeFi, liquidity begets new products, and new products beget new liquidity, Kendrick added. “We believe a self-sustaining cycle of DeFi growth has started,” he said.

The U.S. GENIUS Act, passed in July 2025, established a clear regulatory framework for stablecoins, accelerating their adoption across both retail and institutional markets. The next major legislative milestone is expected to be the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, or Clarity Act, which could pass by late 2025 or early 2026, according to Kendrick. These regulatory developments should further legitimize asset tokenization, DeFi lending and borrowing, and decentralized trading.

Even without the Clarity Act, Kendrick said clearer rules could still come if U.S. regulators — most notably the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — act in line with the law’s intent once the current consultation period ends in mid-2026.

The main risk, Kendrick cautioned, would be if regulatory clarity in the U.S. fails to materialize — a possibility if the administration cannot push through changes before the November 2026 midterm elections — “but not our base case.”

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