Tokenized Treasuries near $60B as HBAR sits in the institutional flow

Tokenized US Treasuries and real-world assets have reached nearly $60 billion in total value across 7,000 products, according to a BeInCrypto report, as platforms from Ondo Finance to Hedera push blockchain-based securities into regulated American markets.

"The numbers say the quiet part out loud: tokenization's bottleneck was never a shortage of assets, it's a shortage of access," David Taylor, co-founder and CEO of EtherFuse, which tokenizes sovereign debt from Brazil and Mexico, said. "A $60 billion market that 97% of people can't touch, where half the assets never move, isn't a market yet. It's a waiting room."

The headline figure masks deep concentration. Of the 1,289 surveyed tokenized assets above $100,000 in value, 910 representing $32.9 billion showed zero weekly transfer activity. Just 62 assets hold 88% of total market value, and the top five — Figure's HELOC product, Circle's USYC, Tether Gold, BlackRock's BUIDL fund and Justoken's JMWH — account for roughly half. Circle's USYC holds $2.96 billion across just 44 wallet addresses; BlackRock's BUIDL, $2.42 billion across 109. Eleven products worth more than $100 million are each held by a single address.

The concentration reflects a structural divide between assets designed to trade and those that function as digital receipts on permissioned ledgers. Roughly $27 billion of the core market falls into the latter category, never intended to transfer publicly. Justoken, which tokenizes Argentine energy and agricultural contracts, grew from $861 million at its January 2026 launch to $2.2 billion by May, driven by additional allocations from YPF Luz — with zero transfer activity by design. The platform has raised just $17.5 million in venture funding against nearly $3 billion in tokenized value, a 165-to-1 ratio that resembles infrastructure economics more than asset management.

Ondo's SEC-Aligned Model Opens a New Channel

Ondo Finance on Thursday launched blockchain-based versions of BlackRock's iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (IVV) and Micron Technology (MU) shares under a structure designed to operate within existing US securities rules. The tokens are issued on Ethereum through Oasis Pro TA, an SEC-registered transfer agent Ondo acquired last year, with Broadridge handling proxy voting and shareholder communications. The product is not yet available to US investors.

The launch follows the SEC's January 2026 staff statement outlining how a third-party custodial model could comply with existing securities laws. Under that approach, a regulated intermediary holds conventional shares in custody and issues blockchain tokens representing a holder's entitlement — an alternative to issuer-sponsored tokenization that drew scrutiny after OpenAI said last year it did not authorize Robinhood's tokenized offering tied to its shares.

Ondo has more than $1 billion in tokenized stocks and ETFs spanning over 430 securities, according to the company. The move comes as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation expands blockchain-based infrastructure and exchanges including Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange announce tokenization initiatives.

Hedera's Role in the Settlement Layer

Hedera's hashgraph network has emerged as a settlement layer for tokenized real-world asset flows, processing transactions for use cases including treasury bill tokenization and carbon credit markets. The network's high throughput and low, predictable fees make it suited for institutional-grade asset settlement, where transaction costs must remain below basis-point thresholds.

Industry forecasts diverge sharply on how fast the market scales. McKinsey projects $2 trillion in tokenized assets by 2030, excluding stablecoins. BCG estimates $600 billion to $1 trillion in tokenized fund AUM by the same date. Standard Chartered's broader projection, including trade finance and bonds, reaches $30 trillion by 2034. Even the most conservative of those numbers is roughly 30 times today's market.

"This is an infrastructure problem, not an asset problem," EtherFuse's Taylor said. "A $60 billion market where 97% of people can't participate isn't tokenization fulfilling its promise. It's tokenization stuck at the starting line."

The only asset class the BeInCrypto report rates as production-grade is US Treasuries. "Everything is compared to the risk-free rate," Taylor said. "If you want to build a different product, you need the risk-free rate to compare your product to, and on the blockchain, that just hasn't really existed."

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.