The boom is being driven by rising investor demand for real-world returns.
The tokenized U.S. Treasury market has grown more than 500% since the start of 2024, reaching a record $5.6 billion in market capitalization at the end of April, according to CoinGecko’s RWA Report 2025.
That fivefold increase was driven mainly by rising investor demand for low-risk, yield-bearing assets, the report explains. A major spike also came in March, when the Trump administration announced new trade tariffs.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, launched in 2024, quickly emerged as the largest player over the past year, capturing 44% of the tokenized Treasury market by April 2025. Since the start of the year, it has grown nearly 373%, reaching $2.5 billion in Treasuries by the end of April. As of today, that figure stands at $2.89 billion, according to RWA.xyz.
The report explained that while tokenized Treasuries have spread across blockchains, the majority remains on Ethereum, followed by Stellar. Meanwhile, the number of unique on-chain holders remains small, with just over 11,000 addresses holding tokenized Treasuries.
These findings highlight that real-world assets (RWAs) are shifting from a marginal position to becoming a central focus in crypto. This is largely driven by their ability to deliver real-world returns that appeal to both institutional and everyday investors.
“The revival of [RWAs] in crypto marked one of 2024’s most quietly transformative narratives,” the report reads. “While attention remained fixated on memecoins, Layer 2 ecosystems, and political betting markets, RWA steadily evolved from a niche experiment into one of the most credible and capitalized sectors in crypto.”
The report also found strong growth across other RWA categories such as fiat-backed stablecoins, which rose by $97 billion year-over-year, reaching a record $224.9 billion at the end of April. This growth was led by Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, which have added $56.3 billion and $37.6 billion to their market caps since 2024, respectively.
Commodity-backed tokens also climbed to a high of $1.9 billion, a 68% increase since 2024 – mainly fueled by rising gold prices. Meanwhile, on-chain private credit grew to $546.8 million in active loans, though the report notes this is still below its 2022 peak of over $1.6 billion.
Tokenized stocks, which are still considered relatively niche, have only grown to $11.4 million as cryptocurrency exchanges like Kraken and Coinbase work to expand into this sector. Kraken last month launched a service called xStocks, which offers tokenized versions of U.S. stocks like Apple on the Solana blockchain to users abroad.
Meanwhile, news broke yesterday that Coinbase, the largest U.S. centralized crypto exchange (CEX), is seeking approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer tokenized equities to its users.
