The use of real-world asset (RWA) tokenization is becoming more commonplace, both institutionally and governmentally, and is expanding out of financial markets and into other asset classes such as real estate.
The World Economic Forum suggests that in 2025, tokenization will lead to “seamless capital flows, connecting global markets in ways unbound by traditional finance’s cutoff times.”
Tokenization refers to a digital representation of an asset — physical or not — onto a blockchain, allowing real time, secure trade. The process is being implemented by some of the largest financial institutions, with the Bank of England considering creating a state-backed digital pound, and the World Bank also building technology to manage tokenized assets.
A new report from Brickken, a Spanish startup focused on the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), citing data from McKinsey, forecasts that RWA tokenization could reach $2 trillion base market value by 2030.
RWA tokenization involves converting physical assets, such as real estate, and making them into digital tokens on a blockchain. Proponents argue this makes the assets more easily tradeable, with increased transparency, and enables fractional ownership of assets, democratizing access to assets and markets that were previously illiquid.
According to the report, Blockchain technology plays a key role in RWA tokenization. It increases security and transparency and lowers operational costs through smart contracts, removing the intermediaries. It also reduces transaction costs, and provides instant settlement of trade, and allows tokenized assets to integrate into financial ecosystems due to interoperability.
While many different asset classes could be impacted by tokenization, the report listed five that proved the most popular: Debt, equity, asset backed securities, funds and real estate. Across these verticals, it was reported that in 2024, there was as much as $50 billion worth of tokenized assets, with debt representing the majority ($18 billion) of this.
Real estate was highlighted as one of the fastest growing asset classes for tokenization due to its “historically illiquid nature.” According to the report, the Security Token Market (STM) has tallied $30 billion worth of real estate that has been tokenized or is in the process of being tokenized as of 2024.
Another market opening up to tokenization adoption is bonds. Governments from around the world are wading into tokenization, allowing for a broader range of investors to participate in bond markets via fractionalized ownership, according to the Brickken report.
Germany leads the world with the most tokenized bonds issued by country, followed by China, and Thailand.
Brickken lists a number of benefits to the adoption of asset tokenization. Among them, eliminating the costs of underwriting and licensing fees, and compliance and reporting costs, which the company argues is possible because “many tokenization platforms also offer automatic compliance features like Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks, streamlining processes that would otherwise be time-consuming and costly.”
Improving pricing efficiency and lowering the barrier of entry to investors via fractional ownership were also among the benefits listed by the firm.
Since its founding in 2020, Brickken has gained significant traction in the European market. The company recently announced completion of its €2.4 million seed funding round, which the company reportedly plans to use to expand into the European, North American, and Asian markets.
According to EU Startups, the company has over €241 million in tokenized assets across 14 countries as of 2024.
