How signed assets could become a $400 billion market by 2026

Stablecoins were crypto’s breakout product to the mainstream in 2025 — and in 2026, the industry is pushing to put those onchain dollars to work by turning everything from stocks to money market funds to gold into signable, tradable building blocks on blockchain rails.

After years of pilots and proof-of-concepts, tokenization now looks less like a niche crypto experiment and more like a distribution upgrade for the capital market, with financial giants like BlackRock, JPMorgan or BNY deeply involved. The tokenized asset market has nearly quadrupled year over year to nearly $20 billion by the end of 2025, RWA.xyz data shows.

The stakes are great, but so are the bottlenecks. Legal clarity, cross-chain interoperability and shared identity traces are needed to prevent marked markets from breaking into disconnected pools.

CoinDesk spoke with founders and industry leaders about the trends that will define tokenization’s 2026 playbook.

Signed assets to reach $400 billion

Featured assets could top $400 billion by the end of next year, up from $36 billion today, said Samir Kerbage, CIO at Hashdex.

“Stablecoins, which have proven strong product-market fit in 2025, are just the beginning,” he said.

“The next leg is defined less by speculation and more by a fundamental restructuring of how value is transferred – and tokenization sits at the heart of this transition,” he added.

This shift is also driven by user demand and capital flows.

“As cash is backed by stablecoins, it’s natural to expect those dollars to seek investment assets — creating a powerful bridge between digital money and digital capital markets,” Kerbage said.

But the scale of branded markets still requires foundational work such as legal clarity, interoperability between chains and shared identity frameworks.

“Like the early internet, the foundations are being laid,” he said. “The question is no longer whether finance will move on chain, but how much of it will – and how fast.”

From institutional trials to market integration

For much of the past decade, tokenization has been a pilot project for many traditional financial institutions. But according to Paolo Ardoino, CEO of stablecoin issuer Tether and CTO of crypto exchange Bitfinex, 2026 will be the year banks move from testing to implementation.

“Tokenization is becoming closer to a mainstream capital raising tool,” he said. “The efficiency gains and benefits of broader access are simply too great to ignore.”

Arduino expects emerging markets to lead the way. Local issuers can bypass outdated infrastructure, giving global investors access to new capital markets at lower costs, he explained.

“Issuers in growing economies have an unparalleled opportunity to boost market inclusion through blockchain-native capital raises,” Ardoino said.

Jürgen Blumberg, COO of tokenization specialist Centrifuge, sees similar momentum.

He predicted that the total value locked (TVL) in real asset (RWA) tokens will exceed $100 billion by the end of 2026, with more than half of the world’s top 20 asset managers launching tokenized products.

“Index providers will move on-chain,” he said, and most major index firms will commit to onchain versions of their products by next year.

Featured Stocks, ETFs and DeFi Convergence

One of the biggest frontiers that took off last year was token stocks.

Robert Leshner, founder of tokenization firm Superstate, said the longstanding legal and operational barriers have begun to shift.

“Public equities are moving from ‘off-limits’ to ‘in-play,'” he said in an email, with the rise of “credible, issuer-led onchain equity structures.”

A bunch of trading platforms, including Robinhood, Kraken, and Gemini, have started offering tokenized versions of the most popular stocks. But the move from wrapped, synthetic assets to direct issuance is also gaining momentum, Leshner added.

Carlos Domingo, CEO of tokenization specialist Securitize, said that “the right way is native tokenization, working with the issuer, where the token is the real share with the same rights and value.”

Domingo also expects tokenized ETFs to gain traction. Once users have stable coins, he argued, they will want exposure to U.S. markets — and ticked indexes like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 are a logical next step.

“It’s an ETF,” he said. If even a small portion of stablecoin capital moves to these products, it could eclipse today’s synthetic asset experiments.

Domingo also sees an effort to bring more real assets to decentralized finance (DeFi) as collateral to lend against. Instead of locking down entire DeFi protocols, the focus is on ensuring that onchain assets entering accessless pools come from regulated issuers.

“DeFi needs institutional adoption to grow, and institutions need high-quality collateral,” he said. “It’s going to be a signable asset.”

The infrastructure phase

For Gabe Otte, co-founder of Dinari, the real work this year will be on the infrastructure layer.

“Tokenized securities will not live on a single ledger,” he said. “They will span multiple chains, platforms and storage environments.”

The key to avoiding fragmentation, he argued, will be infrastructure that allows assets, data and array instructions to move seamlessly across systems.

Tokenization, he said, is becoming “a new form of globalization for financial assets” — enabling faster portfolio rebalancing, more dynamic collateral flows and greater cross-border participation.

Tokenized gold’s rise

One asset class in particular is already gaining traction: gold.

“With gold reaching all-time highs and bullion bullion heating up quickly, 2026 is shaping up to be the breakout year,” said Lorenzo R., co-founder of USDT0. He sees signed gold becoming the collateral layer for onchain funding, just as stablecoins have become the settlement layer.

“The same structural pressures that have driven stablecoins – exchange rate volatility, geopolitical fragmentation, declining confidence in sovereign debt – are now converging around gold-backed assets,” he said.

“What is becoming clear is that programmable gold will evolve from a niche RWA category to the standard hard asset standard for onchain financing,” he added.