11 Min. LesezeitImagine owning a fraction of a Picasso painting or a skyscraper dominating the New York skyline. For most of us, this is wishful thinking. But tokenisation- the process of converting real-world assets (RWAs) into cryptocurrency tokens- has the potential to unlocks access to a broad range of asset classes typically reserved for professionals. There’s considerable excitement given the potential size of the market, with forecasts ranging from McKinsey’s conservative estimate of $4T to Standard Chartered’s bullish $30T. This article explores the facts behind the hype.
Tokenisation in plain terms
Despite the excitement, tokenisation isn’t a new concept. In traditional finance, stock certificates represent the number of shares held in a company, and mutual funds issue units to investors. However, digital tokens upgrade the old way of doing things, as we explain below, while still offering the same entitlements:
Ownership of the asset
The right to receive any income due, such as dividends, and to participate in corporate actions
Contractual claims, including a share of a company’s assets after its debts and liabilities are settled
Financial assets are the most common tokenised RWAs to date because issuers want to streamline their operations by reducing the intermediaries involved in a trade and to take advantage of possible new revenue streams offered by innovative products. Many of the biggest asset managers have launched pilot projects: BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Janus Henderson and Fidelity have tokenised US Treasuries and packaged the tokens in funds (but only a few are currently available to retail investors).
Real estate is also considered ripe for tokenisation due to the high value and low liquidity of the assets involved. Research published by marketplace RedSwan, which tokenised $100M of commercial property on the Stellar blockchain in September 2025, suggests that the North American market alone could be worth $1.2T by 2030.
“The Stellar network’s architecture aligns perfectly with our mission to unlock real estate investing through blockchain,” said Edward Nwokedi, RedSwan’s founder and CEO. “Our partnership brings affordable, borderless access to institutional-grade assets while solving long-standing issues of opacity and illiquidity in commercial real estate.”
Why tokenisation matters
Now, back to the promise that tokenisation democratises investing. Here’s why we believe this is the case.
Accessibility
Fractional ownership provides access to asset classes previously limited to high-net-worth individuals or institutions. For instance, contemporary art platform Particle tokenised Banksy’s famous ‘Love Is In The Air’ painting in late 2021, creating ten thousand non-fungible tokens (NFTs) which it sold for roughly $1,500 each.
‘As more institutions continue to embrace digital artwork and NFTs, the future of art ownership and governance is set to evolve,’ Particle CEO Harold Eytan explained to Decrypt. ‘Platforms like Particle are playing a key role in shaping this future, fostering a sense of shared ownership and democratizing art ownership.’
Liquidity
Tokenisation aims to make illiquid assets easier to trade. At a price tag of $12.9M (paid by Particle at auction in 2021), ‘Love Is In The Air’ is unlikely to change hands frequently. But the NFTs representing it trade on liquid secondary markets like OpenSea, which operate 24/7. Tokenisation also has the potential to overcome other challenges associated with selling illiquid assets, such as high transaction costs caused by the lack of buyers and sellers.
Security and automation
Blockchains can help reduce the risk of fraud because they’re immutable. The chance of a malicious actor hijacking a protocol like Ethereum (which dominates tokenisation) so it can reverse transactions is considered low but not impossible, given such an attack would cost tens of billions of US dollars. It also cuts costs because smart contracts automatically execute when preconditions are met, so they settle trades without the need for an intermediary.
Risks and challenges of tokenisation
Tokenisation may have the potential to seriously disrupt traditional financial markets, but you should also be aware of the risks before you start investing.
The first is the inconsistent and evolving set of rules governing tokenised RWAs. These rules vary by jurisdiction and asset, which means platforms may have to operate differently depending on where their users are based. For instance, RedSwan is only available to accredited investors in the US, but citizens of other countries don’t face any limitations.
Technology risks are another consideration. Smart contracts have vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit to drain funds held in a contract or to tamper with the data feeds, known as oracles, that link blockchains with real-world information, such as asset prices. Networks are also subject to outages- Ton (six hours) and Polygon (one hour) both experienced downtime in 2025.
Then there’s liquidity risk. While tokens representing fractional ownership are easier to trade than illiquid assets, they still need willing buyers. If there’s no demand or if the crypto markets crash, you may struggle to sell a token quickly or at a fair price.
Finally, even though tokenisation is gaining traction, it’s early days for this relatively nascent technology, not to mention blockchain itself. Financial authorities, investors and intermediaries like exchanges need reassurance that tokens grant the same rights and claims as traditional instruments before they fully embrace this new approach to investing.
Momentum depends on the rules catching up. Jurisdictions such as Switzerland, Singapore, and the European Union are developing frameworks that recognise on-chain representations of securities under existing financial-market laws. The EU’s Pilot Regime and MiCA regulation aim to provide legal certainty for tokenised instruments, while U.S. policymakers remain divided over whether such assets should fall under securities or commodities oversight. The challenge is ensuring that ownership of a token translates into an enforceable legal claim on the underlying asset — a prerequisite for large-scale institutional participation.
The future of tokenisation
By bridging traditional finance and blockchain, tokenisation could help democratise investing, boost liquidity and make asset ownership more secure. And with the backing of Wall Street, it is seen by some as one of the technology’s most successful applications. Announcing her firm’s partnership with crypto exchange Binance in early September, Sandy Kaul, Head of Innovation at Franklin Templeton, told The Block:
‘We see blockchain not as a threat to legacy systems, but as an opportunity to reimagine them. We can harness tokenisation to bring institutional-grade solutions like our Benji Technology Platform to a wider set of investors and help bridge the worlds of traditional and decentralised finance.’
If regulation, interoperability, and custody solutions align, tokenisation could evolve into the financial infrastructure layer of the next decade. Rather than replacing banks or asset managers, it may push them to adopt blockchain rails for settlement, record-keeping, and compliance automation. The winners will likely be those who bridge both worlds, combining regulatory credibility with blockchain efficiency. For investors, the key question isn’t whether tokenisation will happen, but how soon it will become invisible, seamlessly embedded in everyday financial products.
