The tokenised asset market is expected to reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, driven by public market securities rather than private assets, as three of the United States' largest financial market infrastructure providers integrate tokenisation into their core issuance, trading and settlement workflows. Those are the central findings of "Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain", published by Citi Institute in June 2026. The report revises an earlier Citi estimate of $4–5 trillion and shifts the expected composition of the market, away from private equity and real estate, and toward US equities, treasuries and money market funds, where institutional infrastructure is now advancing at pace. Public markets drive the revised forecast The $5.5 trillion base case sits within a range of $2.7 trillion in a bear scenario and $8.2 trillion in a bull scenario. The report projects approximately 3% of the US public equity market, a $86 trillion total addressable market, to be tokenised by 2030, equivalent to $2.6 trillion in tokenised US equities alone, assuming 10% of the retail segment migrates to on-chain distribution models. US treasury bills are projected at 10% tokenisation penetration, generating approximately $0.8 trillion in tokenised volume from an $8 trillion market, with money market funds adding a further $0.6 trillion at 5% penetration. Private markets, by contrast, are projected conservatively. The report assigns approximately $100 billion each to tokenised private credit and private equity by 2030, and $200 billion to real estate funds, reflecting structural constraints around illiquidity, relationship-driven transaction models and limited secondary market infrastructure that tokenisation cannot resolve. The current global tokenised asset market stands at approximately $17 billion, up roughly threefold from a year earlier. US treasury bills, bonds and money market funds account for over 55% of that total, with gold and commodities comprising approximately 34%. DTCC, NYSE and Nasdaq move beyond experimentation The revision in Citi's forecast is directly linked to the convergence of major market infrastructure providers on concrete timelines. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), whose subsidiary, the Depository Trust Company (DTC), currently custodies assets valued at over $114 trillion, received SEC no-action relief in December 2025 to operate a three-year tokenisation pilot. DTCC has since convened an industry working group of more than 50 firms spanning traditional and decentralised finance, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Circle, Ondo Finance and Ripple Prime, and confirmed a two-phase service rollout. Initial limited production trades of tokenised real-world assets are targeted for July 2026, with a full service launch planned for October 2026. The service covers Russell 1000 constituents, major index-linked ETFs and US Treasuries, running on the Canton Network in partnership with Digital Asset, its creator. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) announced plans in January 2026 to develop a tokenised securities platform enabling 24x7 trading of US equities and ETFs with near-instant settlement and stablecoin-based funding, subject to regulatory approval. In March 2026, NYSE signed a memorandum of understanding with Securitize to co-develop the Digital Trading Platform, naming Securitize, an SEC-registered transfer agent backed by BlackRock and Ark Invest, as the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-native securities for issuers on the platform. The two organisations plan to develop shared standards for digital transfer agents and tokenisation agents participating in the ecosystem. Nasdaq received SEC approval in March 2026 to enable certain stocks and ETFs to be issued, traded and settled in tokenised form, embedding tokenisation within existing post-trade infrastructure rather than building parallel rails. The report identifies regulated on-chain money as a foundational enabler running alongside these infrastructure developments. Stablecoins are projected to reach $1.9 trillion in issuance value by 2030, providing the settlement layer that earlier tokenisation efforts lacked. Major banks are concurrently developing tokenised deposit infrastructure, which the report suggests could surpass stablecoins in scale. A divergent path for Asia For institutions in Asia, the report draws a distinction that has direct implications for digital asset strategy. While the US trajectory is expected to centre on stablecoins and tokenised deposits as the primary on-chain settlement assets, Citi projects a different policy orientation for Europe, India and Mainland China, where central bank digital currencies and tokenised deposits are expected to be the digital money priority, not stablecoins. Financial hubs in the region are advancing through their own regulatory mechanisms. Singapore's Monetary Authority has progressed Project Guardian to live pilots involving multiple banks testing tokenised deposits, foreign exchange and liquidity use cases. Hong Kong has completed tokenised bond issuances under regulatory oversight. These initiatives operate within licensing regimes rather than the exchange-led, stablecoin-settled model taking shape in the United States. The practical implication is that Asian financial institutions face a different integration pathway. The settlement infrastructure being built by DTCC, NYSE and Nasdaq is designed around US dollar stablecoins and existing custody frameworks. Asian participants seeking to access or distribute tokenised US securities will need to navigate cross-jurisdictional interoperability gaps that the report identifies as a prerequisite for scale but acknowledges remain unresolved. The report rates tokenised financial assets at 1.5 out of 10 on the adoption curve. With DTCC's October 2026 service launch and NYSE's platform targeting the same period, 2026 will test whether the institutional infrastructure now in place can convert forecast demand into traded volume, and whether regulatory and settlement frameworks across Asia can align quickly enough for regional participants to engage on comparable terms.
