Government Bonds Are Moving Onto Blockchains, and the Market Nearly Tripled in a Year

Tokenised real-world assets reached about $32 billion by June 2026, up from $11.8 billion a year earlier, led by roughly $15 billion in tokenised US Treasuries. BlackRock's BUIDL fund alone passed $2.8 billion. What tokenisation is, and what it is not.

Tokenisation records ownership of a traditional asset as a token on a blockchain, so it can move and settle like crypto. Photo: FlippyFlink, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

By the UISC BD Editorial Desk · United Information Service Center · Published 13 September 2026 · 6-minute read

This article explains tokenisation. It is general information, not financial or investment advice.

Much of the crypto conversation is about coins with no underlying asset. Tokenisation is the opposite: taking assets that already exist — government bonds, money market funds, loans — and recording their ownership on a blockchain.

What Tokenisation Means

A tokenised asset is a digital token that represents a claim on a traditional asset held somewhere else. The bond or fund still exists in the regular financial system; the token records who owns it and lets that ownership move on a blockchain.

The appeal is practical: transfers that can happen at any hour, faster settlement, and assets that can be used directly inside digital systems — for example as collateral, or as reserves for stablecoins.

The Growth

Tokenised real-world assets reached about $32.22 billion by June 2026, up from $11.8 billion a year earlier.
Tokenised US Treasuries are the largest category, at around $15 billion.
Private credit is another fast-growing segment.

Trackers count the market differently — another measure put it at $33.69 billion as of 15 May 2026 — so exact totals vary. The direction does not.

For scale, that is still tiny compared with the tens of trillions of dollars in the conventional US Treasury market.

Why Treasuries Lead

Short-term US government debt is simple, familiar and pays interest. For crypto firms and funds holding large dollar balances on-chain, a tokenised Treasury fund offers a way to earn a yield without leaving the blockchain.

BlackRock's BUIDL

The best-known example is BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), launched in March 2024.

It passed $2.8 billion in assets by July 2026.
It has paid more than $100 million in dividends.
It operates across several blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Aptos and BNB Chain.

When the world's largest asset manager uses public blockchains for a fund, it signals that tokenisation has moved beyond experiment.

What Tokenisation Is Not

It is not open to everyone. Many tokenised funds are restricted to institutional or qualified investors.

It does not remove legal risk. The token is only as good as the legal structure linking it to the real asset, and the custodian holding that asset.

It adds technology risk. Smart contract bugs, wallet security and blockchain outages are new risks that a traditional bond does not carry — see our wallet security guide.

It is a favourite word for scammers. Offers of "tokenised" gold, property or bonds with high guaranteed returns, sold directly to the public, are a warning sign rather than an opportunity. See our scam red flags checklist.

The Bigger Picture

Tokenisation, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies are three versions of the same shift: money and assets increasingly recorded and moved digitally, with regulators working to decide who is allowed to issue what.

Sources

"Tokenized real-world assets: reading the 2026 numbers behind the headline growth," Finextra — finextra.com
"Real-world asset tokenization: trends and outlook for 2026," InvestaX — investax.io
"Tokenized RWA market size 2026," Eco — eco.com

tokenized bonds (1)

Tokenised Treasuries: Wall Street's Quiet Move Onto the Blockchain