Blockchain technology has transformed tokenisation from an exclusive arrangement accessible only to the wealthy into a genuine democratisation of ownership. The real-world asset tokenisation market reached US$24 billion ($30.7 billion) in 2025, representing nearly 380% growth over three years, and analysts project it could reach US$30 trillion by 2034, fundamentally reshaping capital flows across the global economy.
The original tokens: Sharing what’s too big
Before digital ledgers existed, people devised ingenious methods to break down ownership of assets that were too large or too risky for a single buyer. Fractional horse ownership remains one of the clearest historical examples. A champion racehorse costs millions to buy, train, and maintain. To overcome this barrier to entry, horse owners formed syndicates — groups that pooled capital. You might buy a US$5,000 share representing 1% ownership of the horse. This share was your token. If the horse won, you received 1% of the prize money; if expensive veterinary care was needed, you paid 1% of the bill. Your paper certificate was your proof of ownership.
Timeshare properties illustrate a different tokenisation model. Instead of dividing ownership percentages, timeshares divide time itself. You don’t own the entire house; you own a time token that grants access for one specific week each year. The timeshare industry, which emerged in the 1960s and grew rapidly through the 2000s, demonstrated how breaking assets into smaller units could open markets to millions more investors.
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These historical examples reveal a persistent truth: people desperately want access to valuable assets, even in fractional form. Yet these paper-based systems suffered from critical flaws. Share certificates were illiquid — extremely difficult to sell quickly.
Trading them required paperwork, legal intermediaries, and typically local buyers, which meant your ownership stake could remain locked up for months or years. This is precisely where digital technology changes everything.
The digital leap: Trading ownership with ease
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Blockchain technology didn’t invent tokenisation; it perfected it. Modern tokenisation replaces clunky paper certificates with secure, programmable code deployed on distributed ledgers. This seemingly small technical shift unleashes extraordinary efficiency gains by eliminating friction from ownership transfers.
Consider selling a physical house today. The traditional process involves lawyers, appraisals, inspections, banks, and months of waiting. Each intermediary adds friction and cost. Traditional equity markets operate on T+2 settlement cycles, meaning your money remains tied up for two full business days after you sell a stock — a vestigial remnant of 1990s technology.
With a tokenised house, the property is owned by a legal entity, and you hold digital tokens that represent your fractional claim. To sell your share, you don’t sell the bricks and mortar — you transfer your token from your digital wallet to the buyer’s wallet. This process takes seconds and costs pennies: no lawyers, no banks, no delays. The token serves as the official digital proof of ownership, and blockchain records the transfer instantly and irreversibly.
Similarly, transferring tokenised stocks eliminates the multi-day delays inherent in traditional broker-to-broker communication across separate financial systems. With your token stored in your personal digital wallet, switching to a new financial service provider is as simple as connecting your wallet to the new platform. You control the asset directly. The token itself is the ownership record.
The efficiency gains are quantifiable. Blockchain-based settlement occurs within seconds, compared with traditional systems that take one to three business days. The Bank for International Settlements reports that trillions of dollars are locked in transit daily due to these legacy inefficiencies. Financial institutions currently spend over US$15 billion annually on post-trade processing that blockchain could dramatically streamline.
The final stage: Tokenised finance and leverage
The ability to trade ownership instantly represents a significant leap forward. Still, the most powerful stage of tokenisation is the ability to use these assets for automated finance — a process known as securitising your collateral.
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In traditional finance, if you own a gold bar in a bank vault and want a loan, you must navigate a time-consuming process: the bank verifies the asset, draws up contracts, and eventually disburses funds. Days pass. Paperwork accumulates. Costs mount.
With tokenisation, this process is automated and instantaneous. Smart contracts — self-executing agreements encoded on blockchain — revolutionise collateral management. If you own tokens backed by gold bars or representing fractional house ownership, those tokens sit in your digital wallet. Because the blockchain verifies instantly and transparently that you are the token holder, you can connect your wallet to a lending application governed by a smart contract.
This application can instantly issue you a loan using your tokenised assets as collateral. The smart contract continuously monitors your loan-to-value ratio in real time. If market conditions shift and your collateral value declines, the system automatically sends a margin call or liquidates your position — all without human intervention. If you repay the loan, your tokens will be returned to your wallet instantly.
The institutional adoption of this technology is accelerating. BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), a tokenised money market fund, surpassed US$1 billion in assets under management by March 2025, just one year after launch, offering qualified investors near-instantaneous 24/7 peer-to-peer transfers and yields on tokenised US Treasury instruments.
A unified financial future
Tokenisation unlocks a genuinely revolutionary financial ecosystem. You can simultaneously own a piece of a house in London, a fraction of a corporate bond in Tokyo, and a tiny stake in a gold reserve in Zurich. All these tokenised assets live in the same digital wallet. You can then use the combined collateral value of these diverse, tokenised holdings to borrow money instantly, without filling out a single piece of paper or speaking to a single broker.
From the first fractional syndicate share in a racing champion’s purse to a future where all the world’s wealth is broken into tradable, programmable digital pieces, tokenisation represents the ultimate evolution of ownership —making it instantaneous, global, and genuinely accessible to everyone. The transition from theory to practice, evidenced by the US$24 billion RWA market and major institutional adoption, signals that this future has already begun.
Investment opportunities to watch
• BLK | BlackRock, Inc
BlackRock is moving from “tokenisation pilot” to scaled distribution: its USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) expanded cross-chain and was accepted as off-exchange collateral on Binance. This broadens real-world utility for tokenised Treasuries. Recent reporting pegs BUIDL around US$2.5 billion, making it the category leader and a live reference account for institutions exploring on-chain cash management. Beyond BUIDL, BlackRock brings unmatched distribution (over US$12 trillion–US$13 trillion in assets under management) and product breadth (iShares) to accelerate mainstream adoption.
• BEN | Franklin Resources, Inc (Franklin Templeton)
Franklin is quietly building the most complete “regulated on-chain fund” stack: its OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX/BENJI) added new networks (e.g., Solana) and launched a UCITS on-chain fund in Europe, giving it global distribution optionality. As tokenised cash becomes collateral and payments “plumbing,” Franklin’s early operational learnings (transfer agency, multi-chain record-keeping) are a differentiator.
• BLOK | Amplify Blockchain Technology ETF
For a diversified approach, BLOK is an actively managed basket of blockchain beneficiaries. This includes exchanges/custodians (e.g., COIN), miners, fintechs, and enterprise software, and aims to capture value from tokenisation and the growth of crypto infrastructure. Top weights include Coinbase, Galaxy Digital, and select miners. It’s a practical wrapper for investors seeking thematic exposure without single-name risk, with the manager free to rotate as the tokenisation value chain evolves.
Christopher Forbes is the head of Asia at CMC Markets
