Executive TL;DR
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Every headline tokenization forecast published in the last two years shares the same structural flaw: it measures the wrong thing. BCG’s widely cited $16 trillion estimate, Citigroup’s $4-5 trillion projection, McKinsey’s more conservative $2 trillion all of them size the market by asking how much of the world’s existing asset base could plausibly move onto a blockchain. None of them ask a more useful question: how much capital formation that currently does not happen, could happen, if the infrastructure existed to support it. Those are very different numbers, and conflating them is why so much of the tokenization narrative talks past the actual opportunity.
What the Big Forecasts Are Actually Counting
BCG’s 2022 estimate of a $16 trillion tokenization opportunity by 2030 breaks down as roughly $5 trillion in real estate, $4 trillion in fixed income and funds, $3 trillion in private equity, $2 trillion in commodities, and $2 trillion across other classes including intellectual property and infrastructure. Citigroup projects $4-5 trillion by 2030, an approximately 80x increase from early 2023 levels. McKinsey’s more conservative central case puts total tokenized market capitalisation at around $2 trillion by 2030, driven mainly by mutual funds, bonds, exchange-traded notes and loans assets McKinsey itself groups as ‘Wave 1’: those with proven return on investment and existing market scale.
The common thread across every one of these forecasts is that the dollar value being counted is overwhelmingly the value of assets that already exist and already trade in functioning capital markets. A $4 trillion tokenized fixed income market is not $4 trillion of new capital formation it is existing bond issuance, much of which was already accessible to institutional buyers through conventional book-entry settlement, represented on a different ledger.
Even the Industry’s Own Research Admits This
a16z crypto’s 2026 analysis of tokenized asset market data is unusually direct about where the market actually stands: ‘in most cases, tokenization has not yet reinvented the underlying assets. It has changed how those assets can move and settle, while only just beginning to connect them more directly to digital financial infrastructure. Much of today’s tokenized asset market remains closer to digitization than true onchain composability. Many assets exist on blockchain infrastructure without yet functioning as programmable financial building blocks.’
This is a significant admission from a firm with every commercial incentive to describe the tokenization market in the most transformative terms available. The honest read of where the market sits in 2026: institutional adoption has proven that tokenized Treasuries, money market funds and blue-chip credit instruments can settle efficiently on distributed ledgers. It has not yet proven that tokenization can solve a capital formation problem for an asset or project that previously could not access institutional capital at all.
Why Digitizing an Already-Liquid Asset Doesn’t Solve Anything New
Consider what actually happens when a US Treasury bond or a large-cap equity gets tokenized. The issuer the US Treasury, or a publicly listed company already has full, efficient access to global capital markets. Tokenization changes the settlement mechanics: faster finality, fractional ownership, potentially lower operational costs for the custodian. It does not change who can raise capital, how much, or on what terms, because the capital formation problem for that instrument was already solved decades ago by existing market infrastructure.
This is precisely why fractional ownership, 24/7 trading and programmable compliance the features tokenization advocates highlight most often deliver real but incremental value for already-liquid assets, while the same features could be genuinely structural for an asset class that has never had efficient access to broad capital markets at all. The feature set is identical; the significance of applying it is not.
Where the Actual Capital Formation Problem Lives
The assets and projects genuinely underserved by current capital market structure look nothing like the asset classes dominating the tokenization forecasts. They are capital-intensive infrastructure projects that need financing years before they generate revenue. They are deep tech ventures with R&D cycles too long for conventional venture capital return timelines. They are mid-market private businesses caught between venture capital’s growth-equity mandate and bank debt’s collateral requirements. They are films, real estate developments at the pre-construction stage, and community-scale projects too large for crowdfunding limits and too small, or too unfamiliar, for institutional fund mandates.
None of these categories suffer from a lack of capital in aggregate later sections of this analysis return to just how much idle institutional capital exists globally. What they share is a distribution problem: the specific mechanisms connecting available capital to their specific financing need do not exist, or exist only in forms too narrow, too geographically limited, or too operationally costly to reach them at scale.
Digitization vs Capital Formation: A Practical Distinction
The distinction is not academic it should determine where tokenization infrastructure actually gets built and for whom.
| Dimension | Asset Digitization | Capital Formation |
|---|---|---|
| What exists before tokenization | A completed, already-liquid asset (bond, equity, fund unit) | A project, venture or business that needs capital to exist or scale |
| Primary problem solved | Settlement speed, fractional ownership, operational cost | Access to capital that was previously unavailable or inefficient to reach |
| Issuer’s prior capital access | Already efficient public markets, institutional lending | Limited, narrow, or nonexistent through conventional channels |
| Value added by tokenization | Incremental faster, cheaper, more flexible trading | Potentially structural capital that would not otherwise be raised |
| Represented in BCG/Citigroup/McKinsey forecasts | Yes the large majority of forecast tokenized value | Rarely a small, mostly unmeasured fraction |
Why This Framing Matters for What Gets Built Next
If the industry keeps measuring success by how much already-liquid asset value moves onto blockchains, it will keep building infrastructure optimised for digitizing Treasuries and money market funds a real but bounded market that a16z’s own data shows is already approaching the limits of what ‘digitization without transformation’ can achieve. If the industry instead measures success by how much genuinely new capital formation becomes possible financing for projects and businesses that previously could not efficiently access institutional capital the infrastructure requirements change substantially: milestone-based capital release rather than one-time issuance, governance structures for multi-stakeholder projects rather than simple ownership transfer, and distribution mechanisms reaching investor pools that conventional private markets infrastructure was never built to serve.
Blockmaze and Capital Formation Infrastructure
Blockmaze’s platform is built around the distinction this piece draws: the difference between digitizing an asset that already has capital access and building the infrastructure for capital formation where none previously existed. Its RWA tokenization framework extends beyond representing completed assets, supporting the milestone-based structures, multi-stakeholder governance and compliant distribution reach that genuinely underserved capital-intensive projects require infrastructure, deep tech, real estate development and community-scale projects among them.
Identity-verified allowlists and compliance-enforced transfer restrictions make it possible to open these opportunities to a broader, verified investor base without compromising the regulatory discipline institutional capital requires, while DAO governance provides the structured decision rights multi-stakeholder capital formation demands. As the tokenization industry matures past digitizing what capital markets already serve well, the platforms built specifically for capital formation not asset representation are where the next phase of this industry’s genuine value will be created.
Blockmaze and Capital Formation Infrastructure
Blockmaze’s platform is built around the distinction this piece draws: the difference between digitizing an asset that already has capital access and building the infrastructure for capital formation where none previously existed. Its RWA tokenization framework extends beyond representing completed assets, supporting the milestone-based structures, multi-stakeholder governance and compliant distribution reach that genuinely underserved capital-intensive projects require infrastructure, deep tech, real estate development and community-scale projects among them.
Identity-verified allowlists and compliance-enforced transfer restrictions make it possible to open these opportunities to a broader, verified investor base without compromising the regulatory discipline institutional capital requires, while DAO governance provides the structured decision rights multi-stakeholder capital formation demands. As the tokenization industry matures past digitizing what capital markets already serve well, the platforms built specifically for capital formation not asset representation are where the next phase of this industry’s genuine value will be created.
Frequently Asked Questions:-
1. What does BCG’s $16 trillion tokenization estimate actually include?
Roughly $5 trillion in real estate, $4 trillion in fixed income and funds, $3 trillion in private equity, $2 trillion in commodities, and $2 trillion in other classes including IP and infrastructure asset classes that, with the exception of parts of infrastructure and private equity, already have functioning capital markets today.
2. Is tokenizing an already-liquid asset like a Treasury bond a capital formation solution?
No. The issuer of an already-liquid asset already has efficient access to capital markets. Tokenization in that case improves settlement speed, fractional ownership and operational cost, but does not solve a capital access problem because none existed for that instrument.
3. What does a16z’s 2026 research say about the current state of tokenization?
That in most cases tokenization has not yet reinvented underlying assets it has changed how they move and settle. a16z states directly that much of today’s tokenized asset market remains closer to digitization than true onchain composability.
4. What kinds of assets or projects actually have an unsolved capital formation problem?
Capital-intensive infrastructure projects, deep tech ventures with long R&D cycles, mid-market private businesses between venture and bank debt, films and entertainment projects, and community-scale developments categories largely absent from the major tokenization market forecasts.
5. Why does the distinction between digitization and capital formation matter practically?
It determines what infrastructure gets built. Optimising for digitization means building faster settlement rails for already-liquid assets. Optimising for capital formation means building milestone-based capital release, project governance structures, and distribution mechanisms that reach underserved capital-intensive projects.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with qualified professionals before making any investment or business decisions.