The Multi-Trillion Land Grab: Who Owns Tokenization by 2030

Many reputable industry research firms forecast the tokenization industry to boom by the 2030s. The financial press covered the headline, but almost nobody covered the control question underneath it. The number sounds implausible until you look at what's actually moving.

The Tokenization Market Has a Power Problem 

The Citi Institute's June 2026 report, "Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain," projects the global tokenized asset market will reach $5.5 trillion by 2030 – up from approximately $17 billion today, with a bear case of $2.7 trillion and a bull case of $8.2 trillion. The report didn't land as a speculative research note. Consider this to be documentation of decisions already made by the largest financial infrastructure providers on earth.

The Citi Institute rates current tokenization adoption at just 1.5 out of 10 on an adoption curve. That low number is a bullish signal; therefore, we could expect that most of the growth is still ahead – and the institutions that will capture it are already building the rails.

What's Actually Driving the Forecast

The $5.5 trillion path is not a private credit story, and understanding that distinction is the most important thing anyone in this space can get right.

Private credit and private equity are each projected to reach only about $100 billion globally by 2030 – confirming that the forecast is overwhelmingly a public-markets call, not a private-asset one. The primary growth driver will be public-market securities – US equities and Treasuries – alongside money market funds and tokenized deposits. Citi assumes 10% penetration of the US Treasury bill market and 3% of US listed equities tokenized by 2030. Imagine: If just 10% of US retail investors shift to on-chain platforms, demand for tokenized public equities alone could reach $2.6 trillion.

The reason public markets lead is structural: they already have deep demand, clear pricing, regulated infrastructure, institutional users, and high daily turnover. Tokenization doesn't have to create those conditions – it just has to improve how the assets move, settle, and reach investors. That's a much lower bar than convincing an illiquid asset class to behave like a liquid one.

Citi frames this as the “full weight of American financial power and the global reserve currency moving on-chain at scale." When DTCC and the NYSE embed tokenization into capital markets, it marks a tipping point.

The Infrastructure Moves That Made the Forecast Credible

Several decisions in 2025 and 2026 converted the $5.5 trillion number from forecast to roadmap:

1) First, DTCC, which custodies more than $114 trillion in assets and processes virtually every securities trade in the United States, received SEC no-action relief in December 2025 to operate a three-year tokenization pilot. More than 50 firms have joined its industry working group – including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Circle, Ondo Finance, and Ripple Prime. 

Limited-production trades are targeted for July 2026, with full service launch in October, covering Russell 1000 constituents, major index-linked ETFs, and US Treasuries.

2) Next, ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, announced in January 2026 the development of a platform for 24/7 trading and on-chain settlement of US-listed equities and ETFs, with fractional share trading, immediate settlement, and stablecoin-based funding – partnering with Securitize as the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-native securities for corporate and ETF issuers.

3) Lastly, Nasdaq received SEC approval in March 2026 to enable tokenized transactions for Russell 1000 equities and leading index ETFs, with both tokenized and conventional shares executing on unified order books with equivalent shareholder protections.

These are production timelines from the institutions that control US capital markets. The Citi report calls them "Structural Orchestrators" – the entities that own both the asset and the cash-leg settlement rail, and can clear trades inside their own perimeter. That's who wins the public markets layer.

The Settlement Layer Is the Real Control Point

The asset is half the story. The cash leg is the other half – and it's where the real control question sits.

Stablecoins are projected to reach $1.9 trillion in issuance by 2030, providing the settlement foundation that earlier tokenization efforts lacked. Because stablecoin issuers hold US Treasuries as reserve assets, that expansion alone could generate up to $1 trillion in new demand for on-chain government debt.

But banks are not going to let all institutional settlement move outside the banking system. JPMorgan's Kinexys facilitates more than $1 trillion in tokenized deposit transfers annually. NYSE is working with BNY and Citi to support tokenized deposits across ICE clearinghouses. The settlement layer will not be won by a single rail – as it will likely be split between stablecoin issuers and banks, with the winning infrastructure being whatever connects both cleanly.

Citi concedes that legacy and on-chain systems will run in parallel for years, comparing the transition to electronic toll tag adoption – where roads carried both cash and E-ZPass lanes for nearly a decade before cutover. The $5.5 trillion market is not a replacement for existing finance. It's a layer being built on top of it, controlled by the same institutions that control the existing layer.

Where Private Credit and Metafyed Sit in This Picture

The honest read on the Citi report is that it's a public markets story. Private credit is projected at $100 billion by 2030 –  a fraction of the $5.5 trillion total, confirming that the forecast is overwhelmingly driven by listed securities and government debt.

That number deserves scrutiny – not dismissal. A $100 billion on-chain private credit market by 2030 would represent roughly 20 times the current distributed value of the entire category. And it would represent a market that DTCC, NYSE, and Nasdaq are not building for – which means it remains the territory of specialized platforms rather than infrastructure giants.

Citi notes that tokenized equities could enable emerging-market investors to access U.S. markets by circumventing capital controls and expensive brokerage services. The same logic applies in reverse for private credit: Southeast Asian investors with excess capital and Southeast Asian businesses with funding gaps are separated by the same friction –  correspondent banking chains, FX legs, legal complexity – that tokenization is best positioned to remove. DTCC is not solving that issue, but solving the US equity settlement problem instead.

That's the Metafyed thesis in one sentence: the infrastructure giants will own the public markets layer. The private credit layer in Southeast Asia –  $92 billion in projected AUM by 2027, 300–400 basis points above equivalent US loan margins, structurally underserved by traditional distribution –  is being built by platforms that can combine institutional-grade legal structure with on-chain settlement infrastructure that the large orchestrators have no reason to build.

The $5.5 trillion forecast is the rising tide. Private credit is a different boat. Both are real. The question for investors is which one they're positioned for – and whether the infrastructure to access both actually exists yet.

At Metafyed, it does.

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This article is intended for general informational purposes and should not be construed as financial, investment, or legal advice.