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Tokenization has floated around conference stages for a decade, but 2025 is the first year it feels unavoidable. The numbers explain why. On public chains alone, on-chain real-world assets now top over $25 billion, with tokenized U.S. Treasuries exceeding $6.6 billion and growing. This isn’t a pilot reel, but a market taking shape in plain view.
Summary
- Tokenization is going mainstream, with BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and major banks already running billions in funds on-chain, proving RWAs work at an institutional scale.
- Europe’s MiCA, Hong Kong, Dubai, and now the U.S. (via the GENIUS Act) are laying down clear rulebooks that give treasurers and compliance teams confidence to move size.
- Payments + RWAs converge — stablecoin rails are evolving into “PayFi,” where invoices, settlements, and tokenized T-bills flow together as programmable finance.
- Asia and Europe lead the race, with mBridge, Project Agorá, and regional clarity; these hubs are shaping global standards while the U.S. plays catch-up.
Skeptics will argue that much of this liquidity sits in walled gardens or money-market wrappers. Fair. But that critique misses the point: institutional balance sheets are already migrating to blockchain rails in forms regulators understand and portfolio managers can model. Franklin Templeton’s on-chain funds (like FOBXX) and BlackRock’s BUIDL have shown that blue-chip managers can run real assets on programmable ledgers without breaking fiduciary discipline. When issuance, transfer, and servicing live natively on-chain, the friction drains out of everything from fund admin to collateral mobility. And this shift is no longer limited to institutions. Retail users are beginning to see tokenized Treasuries and ETFs appear in everyday apps like wallets and exchanges, where they can be accessed alongside stablecoins and swaps.
Regulation is finally getting boring (in the best way)
Rules (not slogans) decide whether RWAs scale. Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation regime is now live in phases, with stablecoin rules effective from mid-2024 and broader licensing rolling through 2025 and beyond. “Boring” disclosure, capital, and conduct standards are exactly what treasurers and compliance teams need to move size. Hong Kong has published tokenization guidance for intermediaries and fund managers, taking a “see-through” approach that treats a tokenized wrapper as the thing it has always been: a security. Dubai’s VARA has refreshed its 2025 rulebooks, including a detailed Virtual Asset Issuance Rulebook — more scaffolding for real capital formation.
The United States, long allergic to comprehensive clarity, has blinked. July’s GENIUS Act finally sets a federal framework for payment stablecoins. That narrows uncertainty on the very rails most tokenized instruments will traverse — even if full implementation will take time and rulemaking. If Europe supplied the handbook, 2025’s America supplied a signal: stablecoin plumbing is now a core financial infrastructure.
Institutions don’t chase narratives — they chase yield and certainty
The past year quietly answered the question of who shows up for tokenized assets. Custodians, fund managers, and global banks are moving first — not for ideology, but for operational and funding advantages. BlackRock’s BUIDL gathered billions within months; Franklin Templeton has tokenized funds across jurisdictions; and pipelines between money-market tokens and traditional platforms are being built by household names like BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs. When LiquidityDirect plugs into a tokenized subscription/redemption flow, you’re not debating “crypto” — you’re shortening a cash cycle.
Cross-border settlement is the next domino. BIS-backed Project Agorá brings seven major central banks and dozens of global institutions into a shared exploration of tokenized deposits and wholesale central bank money. On the other side of the world, mBridge has reached a minimum viable product stage and has already processed real-value transactions among participating jurisdictions.
These are not thought experiments; they are rewiring projects aimed at compressing multi-day correspondent flows into seconds, with atomic settlement baked in.
Payments become the on-ramp
If 2020–2022 was DeFi making capital work, 2025 is payments turning into capital. Call it PayFi — the fusion of real-time payments on stablecoin rails with financing that activates the time value of money the moment funds move. The term is still settling, but the direction is clear enough: payables and receivables become programmable collateral; settlement becomes a trigger for automated credit. The organizations’ writing definitions range from industry glossaries to protocol builders and payment foundations, which is precisely how new financial categories emerge.
Why does this matter for RWAs? Because tokenized treasuries, credit exposures, and fund shares become usable the instant they travel the same rails as payments. When a corporation can settle an invoice in a whitelisted stablecoin and sweep residuals into tokenized T-bill exposure without leaving the ledger, the boundary between treasury ops and portfolio construction blurs. That’s not crypto eating finance. It’s finance becoming software, with RWAs as first-class citizens of the transaction layer. For users, this convergence is already taking shape. Bitget Wallet, for instance, has joined the Global Markets Alliance alongside Ondo Finance to prepare for a future where stablecoin payments and tokenized assets flow together.
Asia and Europe will set the pace (for now)
The U.S. has finally moved on to stablecoins, but adoption may accelerate first in Asia, Europe, and the Gulf. Hong Kong has been explicit about tokenized products and intermediary conduct since late 2023. The UAE’s VARA has leaned into rules that give issuers and service providers a path to operate. Singapore’s Project Guardian has become the industry’s sandbox for asset-management tokenization and, more recently, tokenized bank liabilities for FX and transaction banking. Europe’s MiCA gives large financial institutions a continental compliance template. These are favorable conditions for mainstreaming RWAs — not in isolation, but as parts of regulated financial markets.
Meanwhile, wholesale payment experiments are bifurcating. mBridge — with China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia in the mix — is further along in live pilots, while Agorá aligns Western central banks and the U.S. dollar sphere around a tokenized “unified ledger.” The competitive tension is healthy; the likely outcome is interoperability standards that make tokenized assets and payments speak common languages across blocs. Either path reduces settlement latency and unlocks the same tailwind for RWAs: better collateral mobility, lower counterparty risk, and fewer operational bottlenecks.
What “mainstream” will actually look like in 2025
Mainstream won’t be a press release; it’ll be a feeling. It’s a portfolio manager treating tokenized T-bills as normal cash equivalents and moving them intraday between venues. It’s a corporate treasury settling a supplier payment and auto-sweeping residuals into on-chain funds by day’s end. It’s a regional bank using tokenized deposits to reduce cross-border fails and daylight overdrafts.
And yes, it’s a saver in Lagos or Ho Chi Minh City holding regulated dollar stability on a phone while earning a compliant yield. In each case, the user isn’t “in crypto.” They’re using modern financial plumbing.
The convergence is the story. DeFi gave us programmable money; TradFi brings governance, scale, and risk discipline. With MiCA-style regimes maturing, U.S. stablecoin law on the books, and central banks testing tokenized settlement layers, the path for RWAs in 2025 is pragmatic and partnership-driven. When investors can buy a sliver of a skyscraper or settle a cross-border trade in tokenized form as easily as sending an email, it won’t feel radical — it will feel overdue.
That’s what “mainstream” means. And that’s why 2025, not some hazy future, is the year it happens.
Jamie Elkaleh
Jamie Elkaleh is the chief marketing officer at Bitget Wallet, one of the world’s leading non-custodial crypto wallets. He played a key leadership role in the company’s 2025 rebrand and global expansion strategy, helping scale the platform to over 80 million users across over 130 blockchains. With a background in performance analytics from professional sports and a track record in crypto education, Elkaleh brings a strategic, user-first approach to brand, growth, and adoption. He is also the founder of two on-chain learning platforms and a member of the Forbes Council, where he advocates for inclusive innovation and blockchain accessibility.
