Tokenization's biggest payoff this year isn't the operational efficiency that's been promised for years — it's access, according to David Kroger, Director of Digital Asset Research at T. Rowe Price. In remarks to the firm's internal analysts, Kroger said the immediate efficiency gains are overhyped because most institutions are stuck running on-chain and in-house systems in parallel. The real 2026 win, he argued, is that firms that couldn't get on-chain before — due to compliance hurdles or a lack of CEO buy-in — now can, because the underlying technology stack has matured.
The dual-ledger reality
Kroger described a transitional phase where institutions operate a dual-ledger setup: one on-chain, one in-house. That means the headcount savings touted by tokenization proponents remain theoretical for now. He noted the operational-efficiency story will eventually be true, but not yet. T. Rowe Price, which manages over $1.5 trillion in assets, is experiencing this firsthand as it navigates the shift.
Access over efficiency
Kroger, who also serves as the internal valuation analyst for T. Rowe Price's pending TKNZ Active Crypto ETF, said the real breakthrough in 2026 is that a broader set of institutions can now move onto blockchains. He adapted a traditional discounted cash flow model for the ETF, using staking rewards as the cash flow input — a sign the firm is taking the technology seriously. If on-chain vaults eventually replace ETFs as the dominant institutional wrapper, Kroger predicted that a material portion of T. Rowe Price's fund complex could be on-chain by 2031.
Tokenized funds are already big
The market is already proving the thesis works at scale. The tokenized money market fund category hit roughly $8.6 billion in November 2025, up about 110% year-over-year. BlackRock's BUIDL fund stood at about $2.85 billion in February 2026, operating across eight chains — with the majority of assets on non-Ethereum chains. Franklin's BENJI fund had roughly $1.98 billion across nine chains and over $211 million in cumulative peer-to-peer transfer volume. WisdomTree's WTGXX received SEC approval for 24/7 trading in February 2026, a regulatory milestone that signals the agency is willing to accommodate round-the-clock markets.
What comes next
Kroger's assessment suggests the industry is still early in the operational-efficiency story, but the access argument is already playing out. The next concrete test will be whether the TKNZ Active Crypto ETF gains approval and how quickly other asset managers follow T. Rowe Price's on-chain valuation model. For now, the dual-ledger phase isn't going away — but the door is open wider than it's ever been.
