By Lily Z. King, COO, Cobo

In March 2025, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink issued a statement that’s likely to be remembered as a pivotal moment in financial history:

“Every asset—every stock, bond, and fund—can be tokenized. This will revolutionize investing.”

What made the comment so significant wasn’t just the message, but the context. It came from the world’s largest asset manager, and it appeared in BlackRock’s annual letter to investors - a letter that, just a year prior, made no mention of tokenization, stablecoins, or real-world assets (RWA). That silence has now turned into a rallying cry.

Tokenization is no longer an abstract concept. It’s a strategic direction for capital markets. And the institutions that recognize this shift early will be best positioned to shape what comes next.

Why RWA Is Rising Now

This isn’t just about blockchain innovation or a new crypto narrative. It’s about responding to real structural pressure in the global financial system.

In today’s environment, capital is global, but regulatory frameworks remain fragmented. Financial markets operate around the clock, yet many asset classes still settle on T+2 timelines. Meanwhile, macroeconomic headwinds—geopolitical instability, inflation, and capital controls—are pushing both investors and regulators to explore more efficient ways to move assets across borders.

What has changed in the last 18 months is that the supporting infrastructure is finally catching up. Transaction costs on public blockchains have dropped significantly. Sub-second finality is now possible. Stablecoins are being integrated into real-world payment and settlement workflows. And institutional-grade wallet solutions offer security without sacrificing usability or compliance.

Together, these shifts have laid the groundwork for tokenization to move from idea to implementation.

From Theory to Market Reality

As of mid-2025, over $23 billion in real-world assets have been tokenized on public blockchains. This includes everything from U.S. Treasuries and private credit to real estate, commodities, and structured funds. These aren’t pilot programs or lab experiments—they are actively managed financial products, with institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo among the issuers.

What’s even more notable is the diversity of use cases. In the United Arab Emirates, tokenized real estate is unlocking cross-border investment into high-value property. In Africa and Latin America, stablecoin treasuries are using tokenized U.S. debt instruments to generate yield that would be otherwise inaccessible. In the U.S. and Europe, private credit and fund structures are increasingly being issued and settled directly on-chain.

RWA is no longer a side bet on the future. It’s becoming an operational reality for a growing segment of the capital markets.

Tokenizing Is Easy. Scaling Is Not.

While the act of tokenizing an asset is increasingly commoditized, the real challenge lies in managing, distributing, and scaling these assets across jurisdictions, protocols, and investor types.

A tokenized Treasury bond is only valuable if it can be issued securely, distributed compliantly, and accessed by the right investors - whether they’re traditional institutions, DAOs, or retail participants in emerging markets.

This is where much of the market currently stalls. Liquidity in secondary markets remains limited. Regulatory interpretations vary across jurisdictions. Many issuers lack the infrastructure to manage these assets post-issuance. And for those seeking to scale distribution, connecting tokenized assets to DeFi protocols, custodians, or off-chain payment systems requires technical and legal complexity that is often underestimated.

Three Emerging Models of Tokenized Finance

Based on how institutions are engaging with RWA today, we can identify three distinct models emerging in the market.

1. Institutional-Scale Issuance: Projects like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund exemplify this model. With nearly $3 billion in AUM and fewer than 100 wallet holders, the focus here is high-value issuance for institutional balance sheets. Liquidity is not the primary concern—security, operational efficiency, and yield generation are.

2. Retail-Accessible Yield Products: Offerings such as Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund take a different approach. These products target a broader investor base but often see limited secondary market activity. They are designed to provide stable yield, not necessarily trading volume.

3. Globally Distributed Access: Products like USDY, which count over 15,000 wallet holders globally, show the potential of tokenization to reach underserved markets. These tokens often serve as a bridge between DeFi infrastructure and real-world yield, particularly in jurisdictions where traditional investment vehicles are limited.

Each of these models requires distinct infrastructure and operational strategies. What works for a U.S.-based asset manager will not work for a DAO treasury or a fintech platform targeting Southeast Asia.

Building the Infrastructure Layer for RWA

At Cobo, we view our role not as a product provider, but as an infrastructure enabler for the next phase of tokenized finance. The institutions that succeed will be those with the flexibility to serve multiple investor types, the compliance capabilities to operate across jurisdictions, and the technical robustness to integrate with both traditional and decentralized systems.

Our focus has been on helping institutions navigate these complexities with secure, programmable solutions for token issuance, custody, and integration. Whether it's supporting MPC wallets for institutional security, enabling access controls through smart contract configurations, or offering tools for connecting tokenized assets to DeFi protocols, we are helping to close the infrastructure gap that stands between pilot programs and scaled operations.

Rethinking What Assets Can Be

Perhaps the most transformative aspect of tokenization is not the technology itself, but what it enables. We are beginning to see the emergence of asset types that couldn’t exist under the old infrastructure:

• Tokenized access to previously illiquid markets like luxury real estate, uranium, or private SME credit

• Fractional ownership for cross-border investors, enabling capital inflows that bypass traditional intermediaries

• Real-time, programmable financial products that embed governance, settlement, and compliance into the asset itself

This isn’t just about digitizing the existing financial system. It’s about reshaping who can participate and how value is exchanged.

What’s Next

Tokenization is not a trend. It’s a transition - one that is happening in real time and increasingly being driven by institutional necessity rather than technological experimentation.

As more jurisdictions create regulatory clarity, and as asset managers recognize the operational efficiencies of on-chain issuance, tokenization will become less of a choice and more of an expectation.

The opportunity ahead lies in building the infrastructure to support this shift at scale. That means developing systems that are secure, compliant, and flexible enough to serve the full spectrum of participants—from global banks to DeFi-native protocols.

The RWA moment is not on the horizon. It’s already underway.