Real-world assets, shortened to RWAs, are assets that exist off a blockchain, from Treasury bills and business loans to gold bars, listed shares and buildings, represented by tokens on one. The token might be the official ownership record, a claim on something a custodian holds, a share in a fund or only a contract with an issuer, and that choice decides what a holder can recover if something goes wrong. The crypto hub covers the wider market, and how blockchain works explains the ledger the tokens sit on.
How does a real-world asset token work?
An issuer holds or creates the off-chain asset, records holders' rights as tokens on a blockchain and keeps a legal link between the two.
In a January 2026 statement, SEC staff separated two broad models. A company tokenizing its own security either makes the blockchain part of its official list of holders, so moving the token moves the security, or keeps that list off-chain and treats token transfers as instructions to update it. When an unrelated third party tokenizes another company's security, the token may carry none of a shareholder's rights, and holders take on the third party's own risks, including its bankruptcy. Mainstream market plumbing is adopting the idea too: DTCC's tokenization service, opened to the banks and brokers that use its depository on October 28, 2026, started with 34 eligible securities, including a select set of Treasury bills, notes and bonds.
The data provider rwa.xyz sorts every product into one of five legal structures.
| Structure | What the holder owns | Examples named by rwa.xyz | What it depends on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct | The asset itself, with the blockchain register as the legal record of ownership | Exodus and Galaxy shares on transfer agents' on-chain registers | A law that recognizes the on-chain register |
| Depositary | A beneficial interest in a specific asset held by a custodian | Tether Gold, Paxos Gold | The custodian's solvency and record-keeping |
| Vehicle | Shares in a fund, trust or special-purpose company that owns the assets | BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin Templeton's BENJI | The manager, the fund's custodian and its redemption rules |
| Claim | A contract with an issuer that owes the asset's return | Ondo's USDY, Kraken's xStocks | The issuer's credit, since any collateral belongs to the issuer |
| Protocol | A position defined only by smart-contract code | Maple's syrupUSDC, Centrifuge's deJAAA | The code, its administrator keys and its price feeds |
Tokenized Treasury funds mostly use the vehicle structure: the fund buys bills and repurchase agreements, a bank holds them, a transfer agent keeps the register of holders and approved wallets, and income reaches holders as new tokens or a rising price tied to the fund's net asset value. Tokenized Treasuries for non-US investors walks through each party.
How big is the real-world asset market?
On November 2, 2026, rwa.xyz counted $39.05 billion of tokenized real-world assets that holders can move to outside wallets, not counting stablecoins.
Worked example: What rwa.xyz counted on November 2, 2026
- US Treasury funds and notes: $14.21 billion across 119 products, or 36.4%
- Credit, from asset-backed loans to corporate and specialty debt: $8.33 billion, or 21.3%
- Commodities, almost all gold: $5.09 billion, or 13.0%
- Stocks and exchange-traded funds: $3.58 billion, or 9.2%
- Everything else, including actively managed funds, venture capital and non-US government debt: $39.05 billion − $14.21 billion − $8.33 billion − $5.09 billion − $3.58 billion = $7.84 billion, or 20.1%
- Recorded on blockchains but bound to the issuing platform: another $397.98 billion, 10.2 times the transferable total
- Dollar and other stablecoins, which rwa.xyz tracks separately: $285.89 billion
rwa.xyz calls the first group distributed assets: tokens that can leave the issuing platform and pass between wallets, even when only approved wallets may hold them. The second group, represented assets, uses the blockchain as a record-keeping layer. Figure's tokenized home equity lines of credit, $25.99 billion on the Provenance blockchain, change hands only within Figure's own lending marketplace. A headline above $400 billion and one under $40 billion can therefore cite the same source.
Holder counts are wide but shallow. Of 5.49 million holding addresses, 4.58 million held tokenized stocks and 85,695 held Treasury products, and because rwa.xyz adds holder counts across assets, one investor can be counted several times.
What kinds of real-world assets are on-chain?
Treasury funds lead by value, followed by credit, gold and stocks, with property and other assets far behind.
- Treasury bills and money funds. The 119 products were led by Ondo's USDY, Circle's USYC and BlackRock's BUIDL. On-chain US T-bills compares them with buying a Treasury bill directly.
- Credit. Loans to companies, consumers and trading firms, bundles of corporate loans and other non-government debt. The largest transferable products were Maple Finance's syrupUSDC at $929 million and a note linked to Blockstream's bitcoin mining at $876 million, while a tokenized Janus Henderson fund of AAA-rated collateralized loan obligations held $573 million; a credit rating there describes the loans underneath, not the token.
- Gold. Tether Gold at $2.99 billion and Paxos Gold at $1.73 billion made up about 93% of transferable commodity tokens.
- Stocks and funds. The $3.58 billion was spread across 6,683 tokens. A few, such as Exodus shares, are issued by the company on its transfer agent's register, but most of the value sat with third-party issuers such as bStocks, Ondo and xStocks.
- Property. Tokenized real estate was small: $225.03 million transferable and $1.22 billion platform-bound, across 96 assets in 11 countries.
Who can buy tokenized real-world assets?
It depends on the legal wrapper and where you live: most tokenized funds are private offerings for wealthy or institutional investors, and several of the largest exclude US residents.
In the United States, a tokenized security must be registered with the SEC or sold under an exemption, as in paper form. Private offerings usually take only accredited investors, which for individuals means a net worth above $1 million excluding a main home, or income above $200,000, or $300,000 with a spouse or partner, in each of the past two years. Funds that avoid registering as investment companies often demand qualified purchasers, a much higher bar. Franklin Templeton's BENJI tokens, by contrast, are shares of a fund registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940, the regime that lets funds sell to the public.
Stock tokens that count as security-based swaps cannot be sold to ordinary US investors unless they are registered and traded on a national securities exchange. On-chain US T-bills lists the funds US savers can buy and their minimums, and the guide for non-US investors covers products sold only abroad.
What are the risks of real-world assets?
You take on the risks of the underlying asset plus those of every company and contract standing between you and it.
- A weaker claim than it sounds. rwa.xyz warns that calling a token backed by an asset says nothing about the holder's legal rights. Under a claim structure the collateral belongs to the issuer, so in a failure you are its creditor.
- Default. Credit tokens lose money when borrowers stop paying. In December 2022, Orthogonal Trading, caught up in the collapse of the FTX exchange, defaulted on $36 million of undercollateralized loans through Maple Finance, and remaining lenders in the larger affected pool faced a loss of roughly 80%.
- Cashing out. Tokens may move at any hour, but redemptions usually run through the issuer, often only on business days, and secondary buyers can be few, so a token can trade away from the value of its assets under stress.
- Code and control. A smart contract bug, a faulty price feed or an administrator key that can freeze or reissue tokens can override what the documents promise.
- Intermediaries. The custodian, transfer agent, manager and token issuer all have to keep working, and a third-party token adds that firm's own bankruptcy risk.
- Unsettled rules. The SEC staff statement has no legal force, and each country treats these products differently.
How are real-world assets different from stablecoins and tokenized stocks?
All three put off-chain value on a blockchain, but they differ in what backs the token, who keeps the income and what rights a holder gets.
| Term | What it is | Who keeps the income |
|---|---|---|
| Real-world asset token | A token tied to an off-chain asset such as a bond, loan, commodity, share or property | The holder, after fees, when the asset pays income |
| Payment stablecoin | A token its issuer redeems at $1, backed by cash and short-term government debt | The issuer, since US law bars paying holders interest |
| Tokenized stock | A token tracking a listed share, which may not carry voting or other shareholder rights | Depends on whether the product passes on dividends |
| Tokenized security | Any security recorded on a blockchain, treated by the law as it would be on paper | Depends on the security |
| Crypto-native token | A token whose value comes from its own network, such as ether | No asset income; any rewards come from the network |
How stablecoins work and the GENIUS Act guide cover reserves and the interest ban, and the top stablecoins page tracks their supply. Proof of reserves explains what an issuer's reserve snapshot can and cannot show, and tokenized bonds vs traditional bonds compares a bond's two formats.