Key Takeaways
- • McKinsey estimates the tokenised asset market (excluding cryptocurrencies) could reach $2 trillion by 2030, signaling substantial growth potential across multiple sectors beyond traditional finance.
- • Larry Fink, BlackRock's chief executive, has emerged as a leading institutional advocate for financial tokenisation, arguing at the World Economic Forum in January 2026 that blockchain-based digital assets can reshape capital markets by reducing costs and expanding access.
- • Tokenisation is transitioning from theoretical debate to practical deployment across four major sectors: finance, agriculture, energy, and creative media, with corporate-backed startups building platforms to convert real-world assets into tradeable blockchain tokens.
- • Financial tokenisation eliminates intermediaries and minimum net worth thresholds, enabling retail access to funds, government securities, corporate bonds, and equities directly via smartphone without requiring a broker.
- • Large corporations are actively investing in and experimenting with tokenisation infrastructure startups to understand how blockchain-based asset management could reshape their respective industries.
Summary
Tokenisation of real-world assets is accelerating from conceptual framework to operational reality across multiple industries, with major institutional capital backing the transition. BlackRock's Larry Fink has positioned himself as the most prominent institutional champion of this shift, leveraging his platform at the World Economic Forum in January 2026 to articulate how blockchain-based digital representation of financial assets can fundamentally reshape capital market infrastructure by lowering transaction costs and democratizing access to traditionally gated asset classes.
The market opportunity appears substantial. McKinsey's research projects the tokenised asset market—excluding cryptocurrencies—could expand to $2 trillion by 2030, indicating institutional investors and asset managers expect meaningful adoption across multiple sectors. This projection excludes crypto-native assets, suggesting the estimate reflects primarily real-economy tokenisation use cases.
The deployment phase is now underway across four distinct sectors: finance, agriculture, energy, and creative media. In financial services specifically, tokenisation enables digital representation of funds, government securities, corporate bonds, and equities on blockchain infrastructure, eliminating traditional intermediaries and their associated friction costs. A critical advantage for institutional and retail investors alike is the removal of minimum net worth thresholds that typically restrict access to certain trading accounts and asset classes. Public blockchain networks are inherently permissionless, allowing direct peer-to-peer trading of tokenised financial assets via mobile devices without broker intermediation.
Corporate-backed startups are actively building the technical infrastructure and platforms required for this transition. Large corporations across finance, agriculture, energy, and media are investing in and experimenting with these tokenisation platforms, effectively de-risking the technology adoption curve and positioning themselves to capture competitive advantages as blockchain-based asset infrastructure matures.
The market opportunity appears substantial. McKinsey's research projects the tokenised asset market—excluding cryptocurrencies—could expand to $2 trillion by 2030, indicating institutional investors and asset managers expect meaningful adoption across multiple sectors. This projection excludes crypto-native assets, suggesting the estimate reflects primarily real-economy tokenisation use cases.
The deployment phase is now underway across four distinct sectors: finance, agriculture, energy, and creative media. In financial services specifically, tokenisation enables digital representation of funds, government securities, corporate bonds, and equities on blockchain infrastructure, eliminating traditional intermediaries and their associated friction costs. A critical advantage for institutional and retail investors alike is the removal of minimum net worth thresholds that typically restrict access to certain trading accounts and asset classes. Public blockchain networks are inherently permissionless, allowing direct peer-to-peer trading of tokenised financial assets via mobile devices without broker intermediation.
Corporate-backed startups are actively building the technical infrastructure and platforms required for this transition. Large corporations across finance, agriculture, energy, and media are investing in and experimenting with these tokenisation platforms, effectively de-risking the technology adoption curve and positioning themselves to capture competitive advantages as blockchain-based asset infrastructure matures.
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