The tokenization market is growing rapidly, but a new analysis shows a troubling concentration problem: just 62 assets hold 88% of the total $60 billion in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), and over 910 tokenized products worth $32.9 billion show zero weekly transfers. A BeInCrypto Intelligence report, built with market data from RWA.xyz and feedback from industry experts, tracks roughly 7,000 tokenized products across 12 asset classes, revealing a market that is expanding in product count but struggling with actual liquidity and accessibility.

Why Is the Tokenization Market So Concentrated?

The concentration is striking. Five products account for roughly half the entire market: Figure HELOC, Circle USYC, Tether Gold, BlackRock BUIDL, and Justoken JMWH. Meanwhile, across 1,289 tokenized assets valued above $100,000, the vast majority show virtually no trading activity. The report also found that 97% of the market sits outside the reach of US retail investors, with only about $1.7 billion legally accessible to American retail traders.

This raises a fundamental question: is tokenization failing to deliver on its promise of liquidity, or is the market simply in an early infrastructure phase where dormancy is expected? Industry leaders offer different perspectives on what the data actually means.

Are Dormant Assets a Sign of Failure or Early-Stage Development?

Tal Elyashiv, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SPiCE Venture Capital and Co-Founder of Securitize, argues that low transfer activity should not automatically be read as failure. Many early tokenized products were designed for institutional issuance, compliance, and settlement, rather than public secondary trading on blockchain networks.

"Many of the first assets tokenized were funds (VC funds, private funds). Tokenization in these cases was not done to facilitate retail/public trading, but rather to upgrade institutional issuance infrastructure, compliance, and settlement. BUIDL for example, was created for institutional TradFi and DeFi use cases (and this is what it serves)," said Elyashiv.

Tal Elyashiv, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SPiCE Venture Capital and Co-Founder of Securitize

Elyashiv also raised a critical concern about tokenized equities: 59% of stock tokens provide synthetic price exposure rather than actual ownership of the underlying shares. He emphasized that true tokenization must include full ownership rights at the source, not just blockchain-based tracking of off-chain positions.

Robin Nordnes, CEO and Founder of Raiku, identified a deeper infrastructure problem. Institutions won't actively manage capital on-chain until they can reliably predict whether their transactions will execute and when they will settle. This execution uncertainty creates hidden costs that go far beyond transaction fees.

"The dormancy finding doesn't surprise me, and I don't think it's primarily a regulatory story or an asset quality story. What we hear consistently from institutional allocators is that they won't actively manage capital on-chain until they can answer two questions with confidence: will my transaction execute, and when," explained Nordnes.

Robin Nordnes, CEO and Founder of Raiku

Nordnes stressed that execution uncertainty creates wider spreads, larger liquidity buffers, and positions that traders simply avoid because the uncertainty makes them impossible to model reliably.

How to Understand the Current State of Tokenized Asset Classes

• Treasuries: US Treasury debt is the only asset class that has reached production-grade maturity, according to the report, because treasuries are liquid, familiar, and easier for institutions to assess.
• Experimental Classes: Private credit, commodities, real estate, and tokenized equities still face legal, operational, and distribution barriers that prevent them from reaching institutional scale.
• Stablecoins: While excluded from the core $60 billion RWA figure, stablecoins represent the clearest example of tokenization solving real-world problems at scale, with billions in daily remittances, B2B flows, and corporate treasury transactions.

Fred Hsu, Co-Founder and CEO of D3, reframed the concentration problem as a map of opportunity rather than weakness. The asset classes that have not yet matured are precisely the fragmented, illiquid markets that traditional finance has never priced well because tracking ownership and moving value cost too much.

"Only treasuries have reached production grade so far, and almost every other class is still concentrated or experimental. That looks like a weakness, but it is really a map of where the value is. The classes that never matured are the fragmented, illiquid markets traditional finance never priced well, because tracking ownership and moving value cost too much," noted Hsu.

Fred Hsu, Co-Founder and CEO of D3

Raj Kamal, Founder and CEO of TransFi, argued that stablecoins should be celebrated as proof that tokenization already works at scale. USDC and USDT have enabled billions of dollars in faster, cheaper remittances, B2B payments, payroll processing, and forex flows. He pointed to growing interest from traditional institutions like Western Union and PayPal in stablecoin issuance as evidence that tokenization is solving real workflow problems.

Edwin Mata, CEO of Brickken, said the report's findings reflect a market still early in institutional adoption. The first phase of tokenization focused on proving the technology works, meeting regulatory requirements, and building compliant infrastructure. The next phase will depend on whether platforms can make tokenized assets discoverable and interoperable, turning them from experimental products into practical tools that solve business problems.

The data suggests that tokenization is not failing, but rather that the market is still building the foundational infrastructure needed for broader adoption. The concentration of value in a handful of assets, combined with dormancy across thousands of products, reflects a market where institutional use cases have been proven but retail accessibility and active trading remain underdeveloped. As regulatory clarity improves and settlement infrastructure matures, the next wave of growth may come from payments, corporate treasury, and the fragmented asset classes that traditional finance has struggled to reach.