Tokenizing stocks and exchange-traded funds could open up a crypto market worth $5 trillion — far bigger than the current $30 billion tokenized asset sector, according to Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo. The projection, made public this week, lays out what the firm sees as the next big growth engine for digital assets, one that pulls in trillions of dollars' worth of traditional securities.
The $30 billion gap
Right now, tokenized real-world assets — things like private credit, real estate, and a handful of equity-like products — sit at roughly $30 billion. That's small compared to the total crypto market, which hovers north of $2 trillion. Domingo's argument is that the real prize isn't in replicating crypto-native assets on-chain, but in bringing over the massive pools of capital parked in public stocks and ETFs. He pegs the addressable market at $5 trillion, a figure that would dwarf today's on-chain asset economy.
The logic is straightforward: if you can trade a stock or ETF on a blockchain, settlement times shrink from days to seconds, intermediaries get cut out, and global access opens up. Securitize, which already tokenizes private fund shares and provides transfer agent services for digital securities, is betting that regulatory clarity and institutional appetite will finally push public securities onto distributed ledgers.
Why now matters
The timing lines up with a broader push by asset managers to tokenize traditional products. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and others have already launched tokenized money-market funds. But extending that to equities and ETFs requires a bigger leap. Domingo's $5 trillion claim is a bet that the infrastructure — from compliant trading venues to custody — is ready enough to handle the scale.
It's also a signal of confidence in the US regulatory environment, where the SEC under the current administration has shown more willingness to approve tokenized securities offerings. Securitize itself holds a broker-dealer license and an SEC-registered transfer agent, giving it a regulated path to bring stocks and ETFs on-chain.
The catch
Getting there won't happen overnight. The $5 trillion figure assumes that a meaningful slice of the global equity and ETF market — roughly $100 trillion combined — moves onto blockchains. That would require cooperation from stock exchanges, clearinghouses, and issuers, none of whom are rushing to overhaul legacy systems. And tokenized securities still face liquidity fragmentation and limited secondary market activity compared to their traditional counterparts.
Still, Domingo's statement puts a number on what many in the industry have been whispering: that tokenization's real breakout won't come from bonds or real estate, but from the stocks people actually trade every day. Whether that $5 trillion materializes depends on how fast the plumbing gets built — and how many asset managers decide to push the button.
