The market for tokenized real-world assets hovers near $34 billion as of May 2026. The figure pales, however, next to the forecasts that large consulting firms and investment banks publish for the next decade. The numbers swing between $2 trillion and $30 trillion. The distance between the present and those targets reveals both the expectation of structural change and the deep division over the speed at which the financial industry adopts blockchain technology.
McKinsey & Company delivers the most restrained forecast. Its base report places the market for tokenized assets —excluding stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and central bank digital currencies— at $2 trillion by 2030. The firm’s bull case reaches $4 trillion. McKinsey grounds its caution in gradual institutional adoption and a regulatory advance it views as slow.
Citigroup handles a different range: between $5 and $6 trillion, with attention on digital securities and trade finance. Boston Consulting Group and Ripple revised their earlier estimate downward and now target $9.4 trillion by 2030, with an extension to $18.9 trillion in 2033-34. Ark Invest, in its Big Ideas 2026 report, raises the bet to $11 trillion.
The most striking projection carries the signature of Standard Chartered: $30.1 trillion in 2033-34, a multiple of 885 times the current base. The bank includes bonds, equities, real estate, commodities, and trade finance. For that number to materialize, Standard Chartered assumes an almost total restructuring of global capital markets. Keyrock and Securitize, by contrast, measure only the portion of tokenized assets that circulates freely on blockchains and limit it to $400 billion.
The dispersion of forecasts does not stem from disagreements about the technical capacity of tokenization. It responds, above all, to assumptions about the speed and depth of regulatory changes. McKinsey does not expect near-term regulatory clarity; Standard Chartered projects rapid legal consensus across multiple jurisdictions. Anyone who invests in the sector must understand that the true multiplier is not code, but law.
The growth engines already run. Settlement of operations on public and private blockchains cuts closing times from days to minutes. Intermediation costs fall. Tokenization permits fractional ownership of historically illiquid assets —commercial real estate, works of art, private debt— and offers them to investors around the world. BlackRock manages its digital liquidity fund BUIDL on Ethereum. Franklin Templeton operates its OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund on the Stellar and Polygon networks.
JPMorgan tokenizes private equity portfolios through its Onyx platform. Nasdaq, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation work on the integration of tokenized securities within their regulated architecture. We do not speak of laboratory prototypes; we speak of financial vehicles with billions of dollars under management and with daily audit reports on-chain.
Even so, obstacles persist. The lack of a unified regulatory framework keeps many asset managers in observation mode. Compliance departments still find no clear guidelines on private key custody, liability in network forks, or bankruptcy treatment of tokens. As long as those legal gaps remain open, wholesale capital does not migrate en masse. Some market analysts rebut the highest forecasts and place a more down-to-earth estimate at $1.3 trillion. The $34 billion market of today represents a tiny fraction of any ten-year target. The distance traveled so far is short, and the path ahead is steep.
In my opinion, the debate between $2 trillion and $30 trillion proves sterile without examining the concrete conditions that determine each extreme. The $30 trillion figure requires, first, that legislators in the United States, the European Union, and the main Asian financial centers enact understandable and coordinated digital asset frameworks. It requires, second, that market infrastructure —clearing houses, central securities depositories, trading platforms— absorb tokenization without friction and without losing investor protection standards.
The financial world changes slowly, even when technology races. The legacy systems that settle trillions of dollars each day do not yield to the promise of marginal efficiency; they yield when the alternative offers a cost or speed difference that no board of directors can ignore.
McKinsey’s forecast seems to me the most realistic anchor for 2030. It incorporates regulatory inertia and the unhurried pace of adoption that the industry displays time and again. Standard Chartered’s $30 trillion serves as an exercise in futurology that presupposes an almost perfect political and technical alignment. I do not rule out that such convergence occurs, but nothing in the recent history of international financial coordination suggests imminence.
Tokenization of assets advances. The foundations rise. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and the large market infrastructures dedicate resources and staff to the task. The quantitative leap from $34 billion to several trillion is no mirage. The relevant question is not whether tokenization will scale, but how long regulators and risk committees will take to adopt it as their own.
While that process remains immature, the $30 trillion projections adorn headlines, but real money moves at the pace that compliance desks set, and that pace, for now, recalls McKinsey’s $2 trillion more than the countdown Standard Chartered sketches.
Investors who allocate capital to the tokenized sector today must monitor three indicators, not the consultants’ forecasts. The first: the publication of definitive rules on stablecoins and custody in the United States, pending for years. The second: the actual trading volume on tokenized securities platforms, still minuscule against the traditional market.Â
The third: the decision by large pension funds to include tokenized exposure in their portfolios. When the market confirms those three indicators, the leap from $34 billion to higher levels ceases to be a projection and becomes an accounting entry. Until then, prudence governs the discourse.
