The bank anticipates more activity in liquidity and lending protocols.
RWA today moves between USD 27 and 29 billion, very far from the projected objective.
Multinational banking services company Standard Chartered projected that tokenized assets within public networks could reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028, driven by the growth of stablecoins and real-world assets (RWA).
The estimate was presented in a private report published on May 18, 2026 by Geoffrey Kendrickglobal head of digital asset research at the bank, who stated that DeFi platforms could become the main infrastructure to manage that volume of capital.
The prognosis divides the market into two segments of equal size: USD 2 trillion in stablecoins and USD 2 trillion in real-world assets (RWA), a category that includes instruments such as bonds, funds and other financial assets digitally represented as tokens on public networks such as Ethereum, Solana, Stellar or Polygon.
According to the report, the advancement of tokenization would not only benefit asset issuers, but also DeFi protocols dedicated to lending, liquidity, and collateral management. The bank maintains that as more capital migrates to public networks, activity within these platforms will increase.
Standard Chartered pointed to the BUIDL tokenized fund, developed by BlackRock together with Securitize, as an example. As reported by CriptoNoticias, the product is backed by US Treasury bonds and shows how a traditional asset can be integrated with DeFi applications to obtain performance and serve as collateral simultaneously.
The bank also linked the expected growth to a clearer regulatory environment in the United States. In particular, he mentioned the advancement of the Clarity Act as a possible catalyst to facilitate the entry of institutional capital towards tokenized assets and stablecoins.
In addition to the increase in tokenization, the report anticipates that greater activity could be reflected in more volume within DeFi protocols and, eventually, better valuations for the tokens associated with these platforms.
However, The projection is based on ambitious assumptions. Currently, stablecoins concentrate the majority of the tokenized asset market, with a total capitalization of approximately 323 billion dollars, according to data from DefiLlama. In contrast, RWAs represent a portion much smaller: around 27 to 29 billion dollars in value on-chain.
To reach the goal of USD 2 trillion in RWA before the end of 2028, it would be necessary a growth of more than 60 times the current sizewhich would require significantly accelerating institutional adoption, expanding the use of tokenized financial instruments, and having a sustained favorable regulatory framework.
For now, the report reflects a change within the cryptocurrency market: attention is beginning to shift from the simple issuance of assets to the infrastructure that will allow them to be used. If Standard Chartered’s estimates hold true, future growth could focus less on the creation of new tokens and more on services linked to liquidity, lending, collateral and management of tokenized assets.