.png)
On October 12, 2026, Morgan Stanley's head of digital asset strategy, Amy Oldenburg, said tokenized real world assets could grow from roughly USD 40 billion as of October 2026 to as much as USD 10 trillion by 2030. The bank's own base case, published earlier in October 2026, is far more modest: USD 2.3 trillion. That gap between the base case and the upper estimate matters more than the headline figure, because it points to where the real demand for tokenization actually sits, and it is not where most outside observers assume.
The use case that is actually working
For years, RWA tokenization was pitched as a way to put stocks, bonds and real estate onchain for retail trading. What is actually scaling is narrower and less glamorous: tokenized government securities and money market funds used as collateral. On July 23, 2025, BNY Mellon and Goldman Sachs launched a blockchain based system in which BlackRock, Fidelity, Federated Hermes and Goldman's own asset management arm issue tokens that mirror money market fund shares, settled through BNY's existing infrastructure and recorded on Goldman's ledger. The timing was not an accident: the launch came five days after President Trump signed the GENIUS Act into law on July 18, 2025, giving U.S. stablecoins a federal framework and making regulators and banks more comfortable treating tokenized representations of already regulated assets as real infrastructure. On January 20, 2026, Franklin Templeton said it was going further: new Western Asset funds now restrict holdings to short term Treasuries so they double as compliant collateral, and the firm has taken on reserve management for Wyoming's state issued stable token, FRNT.
Why collateral, and why now
None of this is about making it easier to buy a bond online. It is about collateral mobility: a token representing a Treasury bill or a money market fund share can move between institutions and settle in minutes instead of days, trade outside normal market hours, and back obligations without anyone having to sell the underlying position first. That is the problem these banks are actually solving, and it explains why Morgan Stanley's base case leans almost entirely on government securities, money market funds and other liquid instruments rather than equities or real estate. The USD 10 trillion figure gets the headlines, but it assumes active, broad adoption across asset classes that are nowhere near that stage yet. Morgan Stanley's own researchers are clearer that regulatory treatment, custody arrangements and interoperability between networks still have to mature first.
What it would take to go beyond the dollar
Most of this institutional build out is happening around dollar assets and U.S. market infrastructure. The underlying logic, that tokenizing a liquid, fully backed instrument makes it more useful as collateral and easier to move across institutions and borders, does not depend on the currency the instrument is denominated in. It applies just as well to Latin American sovereign debt and local currency funds that currently have no equivalent onchain representation, and to the kind of institutional custody standards those instruments would need before any allocator would treat them as real collateral. Whether that logic actually extends beyond U.S. Treasuries and money market funds in the next few years is an open question, one that depends less on blockchain technology and more on whether the same legal, custody and reporting standards get built around those other instruments.
The gap still worth watching
The distance between a USD 2.3 trillion base case and a USD 10 trillion stretch scenario is really a bet on regulatory clarity. Every institution cited above names the same bottlenecks: legal ownership structures, custody standards, and the ability for tokens issued on different networks to actually interoperate with one another. Those are solvable problems, and solving them, rather than any particular chain or ticker, is what will decide which side of that range the market lands on.
This article discusses public market commentary and third-party projections. It is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment or legal advice.