Morgan Stanley is forecasting the tokenized real-world asset market will be worth somewhere between $3 trillion and $10 trillion by 2030. Amy Oldenburg, the bank's head of digital asset strategy, said the projection remains on track and expressed confidence in it during an interview at TOKEN2049. The firm is also preparing to expand its blockchain-based financial services.
Where the number comes from
Oldenburg put the range at $3 trillion to $10 trillion by the end of the decade — a span wide enough to cover a slow buildout or a rapid one. She didn't break down which slice of that total would come from which asset class, and Morgan Stanley hasn't published a full methodology behind the figures. What's clear is that the bank is treating tokenization as a long-term business line rather than a side experiment.
Real-world assets in this context means things like bonds, funds, private credit and other instruments that get issued and traded on a blockchain rather than through traditional settlement rails. The pitch is faster settlement, lower operational overhead and the ability to move positions around the clock. Whether that pitch holds at the trillion-dollar scale Morgan Stanley is projecting is the open question.
A bank that keeps showing up
Morgan Stanley isn't new to this. The firm has been building out blockchain-based services for years, and Oldenburg's comments suggest more is coming. She described the bank as preparing to expand those offerings, though she didn't specify which products or which markets would be first.
That silence matters. Big banks tend to announce tokenization pilots with fanfare and then move slowly on actual client-facing products. A strategy head saying the firm is "preparing to expand" is a signal about direction, not a product launch date.
Why TOKEN2049 was the venue
Oldenburg made the comments at TOKEN2049, one of the larger industry conferences on the crypto calendar. It's a setting where traditional finance executives increasingly show up to talk about digital assets without having to frame it as a defensive move. Morgan Stanley sending its digital asset strategy head to that stage is itself part of the message: the bank wants to be seen as a participant, not an observer.
The conference circuit has become a regular stop for bank executives who need to signal interest to clients and partners without filing anything with regulators. Oldenburg's appearance fits that pattern.
The gap between forecast and reality
Tokenized treasuries and money market funds have been the most visible corner of the RWA trade so far, largely because they're simple instruments with obvious settlement benefits. Extending the same logic to private credit, real estate or commodities runs into harder problems: legal recognition across jurisdictions, custody arrangements and secondary market liquidity that doesn't yet exist at scale.
None of that invalidates the Morgan Stanley forecast. It does mean the $3 trillion floor and the $10 trillion ceiling describe very different worlds. The lower end looks like a steady institutional migration. The upper end implies tokenization becomes the default way a large share of financial assets change hands.
Morgan Stanley hasn't said when it plans to detail the expanded blockchain services Oldenburg referenced. That announcement — whenever it lands — will be the first concrete test of how far the firm is willing to go beyond forecasting.
