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Tokenization of real-world assets: Treasury bills, funds and private company shares on the blockchain

Tokenized real-world assets reached 39.1 billion dollars on 27 October 2026, led by US Treasury funds. Who issues them, which rules apply in the US and Europe, and why a token of a private company is not always a share.

Tokenization means recording a traditional asset, such as a government bond, a fund unit or a company share, as a token on a blockchain. The token can then move between wallets at any hour, settle in minutes and be used as collateral in other applications. For years the idea stayed in pilots. In 2025 and 2026 it became a market measured in tens of billions of dollars, with some of the largest asset managers and market infrastructures involved.

The numbers. Tokenized real-world assets distributed on public blockchains, which holders can transfer from wallet to wallet, were worth 39.09 billion dollars on 27 October 2026, according to RWA.xyz, a data provider that tracks the sector. They were held by about 5.4 million addresses. The same source counts a further 220 billion dollars of assets that are only represented on chain, mostly on permissioned ledgers run by banks, and 288 billion dollars of stablecoins, which it tracks separately.

Treasury bills lead. Tokenized US government debt products reached 16.21 billion dollars across 87 products on 6 August 2026, Bitcoin.com News reported from RWA.xyz data, by far the largest category. The appeal is simple: a token that pays the yield of short-term Treasury bills can sit next to stablecoins in a crypto wallet. On 27 October 2026 the three largest funds listed by RWA.xyz were Ondo's USDY and Circle's USYC, at about 2.4 billion dollars each, and BUIDL, the fund issued by BlackRock with Securitize, at about 2.2 billion dollars.

Where the tokens live. On 27 October 2026 Ethereum held about 15.9 billion dollars of tokenized assets, followed by BNB Chain with 6.3 billion, Solana with 4.9 billion, Stellar with 3.8 billion and Avalanche with 1.6 billion, according to the RWA.xyz league table.

The rules in the United States. On 28 January 2026 three divisions of the SEC staff published a joint statement on tokenized securities. Its core message, as summarised by the law firm Cooley, is that a security remains a security whatever its format. The statement distinguishes tokens issued by the issuer itself, where the blockchain can serve as part of the official register of holders, from tokens created by third parties. The latter come in two forms: custodial tokens, which represent a security held by a custodian, and synthetic tokens, which give economic exposure to a security without ownership of it. The staff warned that third-party models can add counterparty, operational and insolvency risk. The statement creates no new exemption.

Market infrastructure is moving too. In December 2025 the SEC staff gave the Depository Trust Company, part of DTCC, a three-year no-action letter to tokenize securities it holds, starting in the second half of 2026 and covering Russell 1000 stocks, index ETFs and Treasury securities on approved blockchains, Ledger Insights reported. In March 2026 the SEC approved a Nasdaq rule change that lets buyers of those securities ask for delivery in tokenized form; trades still clear and settle on the usual T+1 cycle, with tokenization as a post-trade step, according to Ledger Insights on 19 March 2026.

The rules in Europe. MiCA, the EU crypto regulation, does not cover tokenized financial instruments, which remain under existing securities law. Since 23 March 2023 the DLT Pilot Regime, Regulation (EU) 2022/858, has allowed authorised market infrastructures to trade and settle tokenized shares, bonds and fund units within set size limits. Exchange groups are building on it: in April 2026 Deutsche Börse took a stake in Kraken, deepening a partnership announced in December 2025 around Kraken's xStocks tokenized equities, The Block reported.

Private companies are the hardest case. In late June 2025 Robinhood offered EU users tokens linked to OpenAI and SpaceX, saying they gave exposure through a special purpose vehicle. On 2 July 2025 OpenAI stated that these tokens were not OpenAI equity, that it had not partnered with Robinhood and that any transfer of its equity requires its approval, TechCrunch reported. The episode shows the gap between economic exposure and ownership. A private company controls who may hold its shares, and a token issued without its consent usually represents a claim on an intermediary, not a share in the company.

Why it matters: tokenization is growing fastest where the underlying asset is simple and liquid, such as Treasury bills and money market funds. For private company shares, the questions that matter come before the technology: who is the legal owner, what does the holder receive, and has the company approved the transfer.

Unicorn Club, the members-only club of Unicorn Private, gives members access to pre-IPO club deals through special purpose vehicles that hold the shares, and accepts payment in BTC, ETH, USDT and USDC on ERC-20. The guide How to invest in pre-IPO companies with crypto explains the steps. This article is general information, not personalised advice. Investing involves the risk of losing capital.

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