Why tokenized stocks, funds and gold will have a breakout year in 2026

"Issuers in growing economies have an unrivaled opportunity to boost market inclusion through blockchain-native capital raises," Ardoino said.

Jürgen Blumberg, COO of tokenization specialist Centrifuge, sees similar momentum.

He predicted that the total value locked (TVL) in real-world asset (RWA) tokens will exceed $100 billion by the end of 2026, with more than half of the world’s top 20 asset managers launching tokenized products.

"Index providers will move onchain," he said, and most major index firms will commit to onchain versions of their products through next year.

Tokenized equities, ETFs and DeFi convergence

One of the biggest frontiers that took off last year was tokenized equities.

Robert Leshner, founder of tokenization firm Superstate, said the longstanding legal and operational barriers began to shift.

"Public equities move from 'off-limits' to 'in play,'" he said in an email, with the emergence of "credible, issuer-led onchain equity structures."

A slew of trading platforms including Robinhood, Kraken and Gemini started offering token versions of the most popular stocks. But the move from wrapped, synthetic assets to direct issuance is gaining momentum as well, Leshner added.

Carlos Domingo, CEO of tokenization specialist Securitize, said that "the right way is native tokenization, working with the issuer, where the token is the real share with the same rights and value."

Domingo also expects tokenized ETFs to gain traction. Once users hold stablecoins, he argued, they’ll want exposure to U.S. markets — and tokenized indices like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100 are a logical next step.

"That’s an ETF," he said. If even a small share of stablecoin capital shifts into these products, it could eclipse today’s synthetic asset experiments.

Domingo also sees a push for bringing more real-world assets to decentralized finance (DeFi) as collateral to borrow against. Instead of gating entire DeFi protocols, the focus is on ensuring that onchain assets entering permissionless pools come from regulated issuers.

"DeFi needs institutional adoption to grow, and institutions need high-quality collateral," he said. "That’s going to be tokenized assets."

The infrastructure phase

For Gabe Otte, co-founder of Dinari, the real work this year will be on the infrastructure layer.

"Tokenized securities won’t live on a single ledger," he said. "They will span multiple chains, platforms, and custodial environments."

The key to avoiding fragmentation, he argued, will be infrastructure that enables assets, data and settlement instructions to move across systems seamlessly.

Tokenization, he said, is becoming "a new form of globalization for financial assets" — allowing faster portfolio rebalancing, more dynamic collateral flows, and greater cross-border participation.

Tokenized gold's rise

One asset class in particular is already gaining traction: gold.

"With gold hitting all-time highs and tokenized gold heating up fast, 2026 is shaping up to be the breakout year," said Lorenzo R., co-founder of USDT0. He sees tokenized gold becoming the collateral layer for onchain finance, just as stablecoins became the settlement layer.

"The same structural pressures that propelled stablecoins — rate volatility, geopolitical fragmentation, declining trust in sovereign debt — are now converging around gold-backed assets," he said.

"What’s becoming clear is that programmable gold will evolve from a niche RWA category into the default hard-asset standard for onchain finance," he added.