The most active assets on-chain are no longer newly issued tokens, but U.S. equities, U.S. Treasuries, gold, and crude oil. Over the past few months, the hottest topic across the crypto industry has been “who can bring U.S. stocks on-chain.” Binance has listed 7,000 U.S. equities; Bitget launched Reality; Gate integrated Alpaca; and OKX’s CEO Star publicly stated, “Tokenized equities are one of the most important use cases for Real-World Assets (RWA). We expect to see xStocks on X Layer very soon.” A broad industry consensus is rapidly forming. But if you step back from all this buzz and ask a calmer, more fundamental question—who is steadily profiting amid this frenzy?—the answer may surprise many.

A functional shift in the crypto industry has already become apparent to many. The most active assets on-chain are no longer newly minted tokens, but U.S. equities, U.S. Treasuries, gold, and crude oil. Exchanges are racing not to list the next meme coin—but Tesla and NVIDIA. When users open an on-chain trading interface, the underlying assets they see increasingly resemble those offered by traditional securities trading software.

Stablecoins have already delivered an early signal. USDT and USDC achieved global scale—not through the narrative of “a new on-chain currency,” but by solving a concrete problem: cross-border USD transfers are too slow, too expensive, and too heavily restricted. Wrapping USD with blockchain isn’t about replacing the dollar—it’s about making the dollar flow more smoothly. Tokenized equities are walking precisely the same path. They’re not trying to invent a new financial asset, but rather to give a more efficient circulation layer to assets that have existed for decades and are already the most familiar to global investors. The significance of this goes far beyond “adding yet another class of assets tradable on-chain.” It signals a re-anchoring of blockchain’s core value—not toward creating new assets, but toward becoming superior infrastructure for circulating existing ones.

Three signals: This is not just another round of “RWA storytelling” passed like a hot potato. Three clear signals indicate tokenization has already crossed its inflection point.

Signal One: The world’s largest securities post-trade infrastructure is preparing for tokenization. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) is one of the most critical back-end infrastructures in the U.S. securities market—currently holding over $114 trillion in assets and processing trillions of dollars in securities transactions annually. In December 2025, the SEC issued DTCC a three-year No-Action Letter, authorizing it to pilot tokenization for Russell 1000 constituents, ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. The project is scheduled to launch limited production trading in July 2026, with scope gradually expanding. An industry working group formed around the initiative has already attracted participation from over 50 institutions—including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Nasdaq, BNP Paribas, Citi, Morgan Stanley, as well as digital asset firms Circle and Anchorage Digital.

Signal Two: Capital scale has moved beyond the “experimental phase.” According to a16z crypto, the tokenized assets market (excluding stablecoins) grew from under $3 billion to approximately $34 billion in just two years—an increase of over 10x. Citigroup forecasts the tokenized securities market will reach $5.5 trillion by 2030; Boston Consulting Group, in collaboration with Ripple, estimates $9.4 trillion; and Standard Chartered projects it will exceed $30 trillion by 2034. These institutions are putting their reputations behind this ambitious future.

Signal Three: Regulatory frameworks are beginning to take shape. The GENIUS Act was signed into law in 2025, establishing a federal legal framework for stablecoin settlement layers—a critical enabler for tokenized asset trading and settlement. Simultaneously, the SEC released guidance classifying tokenized securities into three categories, defining compliance boundaries for issuers. The CLARITY Act is currently advancing through Congress, aiming to clarify the overarching regulatory framework for digital asset markets. Taken together, these legislative developments mean institutional capital’s entry pathway is shifting—from a “gray zone” to one grounded in clear, enforceable rules. Yet one number warrants sober reflection: despite explosive growth, the current total size of tokenized equities stands at roughly $2.2 billion—just 0.001% of global equity market capitalization. The ceiling remains extremely high—but we are still very far from reaching it.

First Half: Which assets go on-chain first—and which haven’t moved yet. Tokenization’s penetration varies dramatically across asset classes.
Priority-on-chain assets: Those with transparent pricing, stable demand, and simple ownership structures. U.S. Treasuries surpassed $10 billion in just two and a half years; gold-backed tokens now exceed $5 billion—gold benefits from global standardization, convenient warehousing, and minimal degradation, making it naturally suited to tokenization logic. Tokenized equities: Took over three years to achieve meaningful scale, yet remain smaller than tokenized bonds and money-market instruments. Complex assets: Private equity, venture capital, and other structurally complex, long-duration assets have taken even longer. On-chain scale is only one dimension. A more critical question is: Once tokenized, are these assets actually being used? The answer is: Mostly no. For example, a particular tokenized bond has a market cap of $15.2 billion—but only ~5% (~$800 million) is deployed in DeFi protocols. Most tokenized assets remain, in essence, “account books moved onto-chain”—not freely composable, programmable financial building blocks. Going on-chain is merely step one; composability is the endgame.

Second Half: Who are the true winners? The front-end spectacle masks back-end realities. We’ve previously written about Alpaca—the company commands ~94% market share in the tokenized U.S. equities space. Binance, Gate, Bitget, Kraken’s xStocks, and Ondo’s underlying clearing and custody—all rely on Alpaca. Exchanges compete on the front end; Alpaca collects fees quietly in the back end. Alpaca is simply the most visible case of this model. Zoom out further: Custodian banks need someone to hold the real underlying assets; clearinghouses like DTCC are difficult—if not impossible—to fully bypass; market makers provide liquidity; infrastructure providers like Alpaca possess deep moats; and public blockchains serve as value carriers. In short: Front-end competition fights for market share; back-end infrastructure competes for the entire market itself.

Prologue to the Game: At this point, a larger unanswered question looms: When tokenized assets truly achieve composability, will the landscape be reshuffled entirely? Today’s tokenization is mostly “moving ledgers”—transferring off-chain ownership records onto-chain, enabling faster settlement, but leaving the underlying asset’s operational logic unchanged. The next stage is genuinely hard: turning these tokenized assets into programmable financial legos—capable of serving as collateral for lending, participating in DeFi protocols, freely transferring across chains, and composing seamlessly with other tokenized assets. At that stage, today’s infrastructure may require rebuilding—and today’s access points may need redefinition. DTCC, BlackRock, Ondo, and Nasdaq are all positioning themselves—but the ultimate beneficiaries may not be front-end players. Instead, they’ll likely be those providing infrastructure, clearing, custody, liquidity, and public-chain resources. The story of tokenized assets has only just begun.

[Conflux]