Author: Anna Volkova | Tokenization Architect | Co-founder of AssetBridge Protocol

I tokenized my first property in 2021. A small apartment in Lisbon, split into 1,000 tokens, sold to 47 investors across 12 countries. The whole process took 6 weeks. Traditional real estate syndication would have taken 6 months and cost ten times more.

That experiment taught me something important: real-world asset tokenization isn't coming. It's already here. Most people just don't see it yet.

What RWA tokenization actually means

Let me demystify this. Tokenization is simply representing ownership rights as digital tokens on a blockchain. Instead of paper deeds, PDF contracts, and notary stamps — you have cryptographic proof of ownership that can be transferred in seconds.

The asset stays in the real world. The ownership layer moves on-chain. That's it. No magic, no complexity — just a more efficient way to track who owns what.

But the implications are enormous.

Fractionalization changes everything

A building in Manhattan costs $50 million. How many people can write that check? Maybe a few hundred in the world. But split it into 50,000 tokens at $1,000 each, and suddenly millions of investors can participate.

This isn't just about democratizing access — though that matters. It's about liquidity. Real estate has always been illiquid because transactions are complex and expensive. Tokenization makes trading property shares as simple as trading stocks.

We're seeing platforms where tokenized real estate trades 24/7. No brokers, no escrow periods, no waiting for bank transfers. Settlement in minutes, not months.

Beyond real estate

Property is the obvious first use case because it's the world's largest asset class — roughly $330 trillion globally. But the same technology applies to virtually any asset.

Art. A Picasso painting becomes accessible to retail collectors through fractional ownership. Commodities. Gold bars in Swiss vaults, tracked and tradeable on-chain. Private equity. Startup shares that were locked for 10 years now have secondary markets.

Even stranger assets work. Royalty streams from music catalogs. Revenue shares from solar farms. Carbon credits with transparent verification. If it generates cash flow or holds value, it can be tokenized.

The infrastructure gap

Here's the honest assessment: we're not ready for mass adoption yet. The technology works. The legal frameworks are catching up. But the infrastructure connecting both is still fragmented.

Every jurisdiction has different rules about securities. A tokenized property in Germany needs different compliance than one in Singapore. We're building bridges between legal systems that were never designed to interoperate.

Oracle networks are another bottleneck. On-chain tokens need reliable data about off-chain assets. Is the building still standing? Are tenants paying rent? Is insurance current? These data feeds must be trustworthy and tamper-proof.

The projects solving these infrastructure problems will capture enormous value. Less glamorous than launching tokens, but more important.

What I expect in 2025

Three developments will define this year.

First, major financial institutions will launch RWA platforms. BlackRock, JPMorgan, and others are already experimenting. 2025 is when they go live with client-facing products.

Second, we'll see the first truly liquid secondary markets for tokenized real estate. Not just trading between accredited investors, but platforms accessible to retail participants in jurisdictions that allow it.

Third, cross-chain RWA standards will emerge. Right now, a tokenized building on Ethereum can't interact with one on Polygon. That fragmentation limits composability. Whoever solves interoperability wins.

The trillion-dollar question

How much of the world's assets will be tokenized? My conservative estimate: $10 trillion by 2030. That's about 3% of global real estate alone.

Aggressive estimate? $50 trillion. If tokenization becomes the default for asset issuance — not a novelty but the standard — we're looking at a complete restructuring of capital markets.

The infrastructure layer being built today will underpin that transformation. Those who understand this aren't buying tokens. They're building the rails that tokens will run on.

Anna Volkova is a tokenization architect specializing in real estate and alternative assets. She has structured over $200 million in tokenized offerings across European and Asian markets.