Asset Tokenization in Financial Markets 2025

Contents21 Tokenized assets Regional considerations Regional differences will shape which asset classes are tokenized first. Equities and bonds already operate rather efficiently in advanced economies (AEs) but could benefit from tokenization through improved access, liquidity and lower costs. In emerging market economies (EMEs), where markets are less liquid, tokenization can democratize access across equities, fixed income and alternatives. In EMEs that have nascent existing financial infrastructure to invest in these products, this could allow for “leap-frogging”. In most markets, real estate, private credit and PE are difficult to access and invest in and tokenization can create increased efficiencies. Meanwhile, commodities such as precious metals and carbon credits show region- specific adoption based on market maturity and regulation. Current vs. target adoption Each asset class is following its own adoption path, ranging from tokenizing existing assets to issuing them natively on-chain. While any electronic asset can, in principle, be natively issued, fixed income instruments – such as bonds – have advanced faster due to their simple structures and ability to be issued as a digitally native token. In contrast, real estate and physical commodities are limited by their off-chain nature and cannot be natively issued in the same way. Similarly, off-chain funds often take on-chain assets and wrap them into traditional structures such as exchange- traded funds (ETFs).