Boardrooms have finally stopped arguing about whether tokenization belongs inside a serious financial institution, and the survey data helps explain why. Broadridge’s 2026 Tokenization Pulse Study of 200 North American financial services leaders found that 84 percent consider tokenization strategically important to their organizations, while 68 percent expect it to partially reshape financial markets over the next three to five years.
Settling that argument was the simple part. The harder question, and the one the industry keeps answering with the wrong measurement, is which assets actually belong on-chain.
Counting how many assets have been brought on-chain measures how busy the issuance team has been, but it tells you almost nothing about whether a market exists. A token justifies itself only when it fixes something the existing market handles badly, and much of the current catalog does not clear that bar.
Dormant tokens expose a counting problem
Look past the headline totals, and the market starts to feel oddly quiet. Research covering more than 7,000 tokenized products across 12 asset classes found that just 62 assets hold 88 percent of the value, while five products account for roughly half of the market.
The trading data is quieter still. Of 1,289 tokenized assets worth more than $100,000, only 379 showed any weekly activity. The same research found that 56 percent of tokenized asset value showed no weekly transfer activity.
Wrapping an asset and leaving it parked on a ledger can create a press release and a line in a quarterly update. It does not necessarily create a market.
Anyone who has built a consumer product will recognize the pattern. Mobile money reached 2.3 billion registered accounts globally in 2025, but only 25.7 percent were active in a given 30-day period. Signing people up and getting them to transact are two different jobs.
Tokenization needs the same distinction between issuance and actual use.
Assets earn their place by passing a test
The screen I apply has four elements. Any serious proposal should clear at least one of them without straining.
Tokenization has to widen access, deepen liquidity, sharpen transparency, or take real cost out of issuance, custody, and settlement. If a proposal requires an elaborate explanation of how it might eventually achieve one of those things, that is usually the answer.
Tokenizing an asset that already trades efficiently can simply split liquidity across competing venues, potentially leaving investors with wider spreads, weaker execution, or prices that diverge from the underlying instrument. The technology has not improved the market if it merely recreates an existing asset with another layer around it.
The same principle applies to weaker underlying assets. If the legal structure is murky, the cash flows are unreliable, or ownership itself is difficult to verify, tokenization does not solve those weaknesses. It can simply distribute them more efficiently.
Gold shows what genuine demand looks like
Precious metals clear the screen more naturally because the demand already exists and buyers generally understand what they own.
Global bar and coin demand reached 474 tonnes in the first quarter of 2026, up 42 percent year on year and the second-highest quarterly figure on record. Chinese demand climbed 67 percent to a record 207 tonnes.
India shows the same appetite from another angle. Gold investment demand rose 54 percent year on year to 82 tonnes during the quarter. Bars and coins accounted for 52 percent of total domestic gold demand, the highest proportion recorded since 2013. That is notable in a market where jewelry has traditionally dominated consumption.
On-chain, demand is also showing up as trading rather than merely parked supply.
Spot trading in tokenized gold reached $90.7 billion during the first quarter of 2026, more than the $84.6 billion traded during all of 2025. Over the same 15-month period, the market capitalization of tokenized commodities rose from $1.43 billion to $5.55 billion, with gold-backed PAXG and XAUT accounting for 89.1 percent of that expansion.
Those are the numbers that matter because they describe assets that people are actually using.
Traditional financial institutions have also moved into the category. HSBC launched its Gold Token for retail investors in Hong Kong in 2024, allowing fractional ownership of physical gold stored in the bank’s vault. HSBC now describes it as one of the world’s largest tokenized gold products.
A person with a phone and a few dollars
Lowering the entry ticket only means something if whatever sits behind the token can continue to hold value over time.
Buying gold in very small denominations can turn an asset traditionally associated with vaults, dealers, and larger investment amounts into something that can potentially become part of an ordinary savings habit.
The distribution rails already exist across many emerging markets. More than $2 trillion moved through mobile money globally in 2025, while Sub-Saharan Africa continued to account for much of the growth in registered and active accounts.
What remains more difficult is providing savings instruments that people can access through those rails and that are not tied entirely to the fortunes of a local currency or speculative token.
Gold also reaches the production side of that economy. Artisanal and small-scale miners produce about 20 percent of the world’s gold each year, with millions of people depending on the sector for their livelihoods. Much of the activity remains informal, limiting access to financing, insurance, transparent pricing, and formal supply chains.
Tokenization built around audited refining, insured custody, and verifiable provenance can give that output a documented history and a route into more formal markets.
The same infrastructure can then serve producers seeking better market access at one end of the supply chain and households seeking accessible savings instruments at the other.
That symmetry is one reason this asset class is worth the effort.
Measuring use instead of issuance
Anyone deciding what to bring on-chain next should stop counting assets and start measuring behavior.
Transfer activity per asset, growth in distinct holders, redemption rates, spreads against the underlying instrument, and the share of supply being used as collateral can reveal whether a functioning market has actually formed. These are not difficult measurements. They are simply less flattering than issuance totals.
Access matters too. BeInCrypto’s 2026 tokenization research estimates that 97 percent of the current tokenized real-world asset market remains outside the reach of US retail investors.
Without wider distribution and interoperability, tokenized markets risk hardening into separate regional pools. A large catalog combined with uneven access can create several shallow markets rather than one deep one.
The tokenized markets still standing in ten years will be built around assets that actually move, settle, and reach people who previously had no practical way in.
A shorter list of assets backed by demonstrable demand and credible custody can trade more deeply than a sprawling one.
Putting an asset on a blockchain stopped being the difficult part years ago. The length of the catalog proves that.
Choosing what actually belongs there is the work that separates a market from a ledger.
Lisa Loud is Chief Product Officer at Ubuntu Tribe, where she focuses on using tokenization to expand access to gold. Her career spans fintech, blockchain, and technology, including experience with Apple, PayPal, BitMEX, and ShapeShift. She is also an international speaker on blockchain, decentralized finance, financial inclusion, and the future of money.
Editor’s note: This contributed article has been lightly edited for clarity, length, and style. Where appropriate, TNGlobal may verify, qualify or omit factual claims that cannot be independently corroborated. The views and arguments expressed remain those of the author.
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