The tokenization of real-world assets is accelerating on two fronts—sovereign-level infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and equity markets on Wall Street—pushing blockchain-based finance from experiment to institutional cornerstone.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign tokenization push
Faisal Monai, the architect behind Saudi Arabia’s digital payment system SADAD, has secured $12.5 billion in mandates through his platform droppRWA to bring the kingdom’s multi-trillion-dollar economy on-chain. In an interview with CoinDesk, Monai framed tokenization as a shield against global shocks. “By 2030, Saudi Arabia will have demonstrated something the rest of the world is still debating: that sovereign-grade tokenization can function as core national financial infrastructure.”
droppRWA already executed the world’s first tokenized property deed transfer on February 4, slashing settlement from days to seconds. The infrastructure is now set for a wider rollout across the kingdom’s real estate pipeline, and Monai plans to extend tokenization to energy and manufacturing. He expects stablecoin-based real estate settlement to go live within four years, operating under the oversight of the Capital Market Authority and the Saudi Central Bank.
Monai emphasized that tokenization provides “absolute certainty” of ownership, transfer, and settlement—a critical safety layer during market stress. The effort aligns with a broader Gulf strategy to preserve wealth without abandoning the U.S. dollar, instead building “multi-rail” settlement infrastructure alongside existing systems.
Wall Street’s equity tokenization boom
In the United States, the market for tokenized stocks surged from $32 million in January 2025 to over $960 million by January 2026. Ondo Global Markets captured the largest share within 48 hours of its September 2025 launch, listing more than 260 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs backed 1:1 by a registered broker-dealer. Ondo Finance President Ian De Bode projects the market will hit $3 billion before the end of 2026.
BlackRock’s tokenized Treasury fund BUIDL crossed $1 billion in assets, and CEO Larry Fink declared in his 2025 annual letter that “every stock, bond, and fund” could operate on-chain. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are integrating tokenized assets into their portfolios, and institutions now control 70% of the asset-tokenization space. A cross-border redemption of tokenized U.S. Treasuries settled in under five seconds, highlighting the efficiency leap over traditional T+2 settlement.
Regulatory scaffolding and pushback
The SEC under Chair Paul Atkins has launched a crypto initiative and authorized a three-year pilot program for tokenized securities trading, waiving certain federal securities laws for transfers to registered wallets. Nasdaq proposed rule changes for tokenized securities trading with T+1 settlement. The agency also mandated distinct ISINs for third-party tokenized securities and required broker-dealers to retain control of private keys.
However, the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) and IOSCO have raised concerns. The WFE argues that tokenized stocks may lack equivalent investor protections and could damage underlying companies if the tokens fail. IOSCO flagged counterparty risks, legal ambiguities over whether a token represents the underlying security or a derivative, and regulatory fragmentation across jurisdictions. About 30% of countries still lack clear digital asset rules, slowing cross-border adoption.
A multi-trillion-dollar horizon
Despite the friction, growth forecasts are staggering. Bitwise analysts expect tokenization to capture 1–5% of the $257 trillion global stock and bond markets. Other projections see the tokenized real-world asset market expanding from $0.6 trillion in 2025 to nearly $19 trillion by 2033. Bernstein named 2026 the start of a “tokenization supercycle,” and SEC Chair Atkins envisions AI agents interacting directly with on-chain capital markets.
From Saudi Arabia’s sovereign infrastructure to Wall Street’s programmable equities, the race is no longer about whether blockchain transforms finance—but how fast, and who controls the rails.
