The downward trend in the cryptocurrency market continued today, as the total market capitalization fell by 3.17% over the past month due to ongoing sales. However, one sector has diverged from this trend: tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).
The distributed asset value has continued to rise and reached a new all-time high, despite unfavorable market conditions.
Bitcoin sales continue, with the real-world asset sector largely remaining unchanged.
According to RWA.xyz's information, the sector now has a distributed asset value of 19.06 billion dollars. This represents a 4.59% increase in value over the past month.
At the same time, the represented asset value is a total of 414.6 billion dollars, particularly influenced by the 395.2 billion dollars of institutional assets managed by Canton Network.
The number of asset owners has also increased, rising by 7.23% to a total of 583,821. Stablecoins still dominate the sector, with a total value of 299.17 billion dollars and 212.54 million owners. This corresponds to a 4.12% growth during the same period.
Kevin Rusher, founder of RAAC – the RWA lending and borrowing ecosystem – stated that the market's attention in the crypto sector is largely focused on the price of Bitcoin, which has continued to decline. He noted that recent developments suggest that selling pressure may continue.
As usual, the greatest attention in the crypto sector is focused on the price of bitcoin, which continues to slide away from 2025 like glued to a sled... Yesterday's news that Strategy has halted BTC purchases and moved over 700 million dollars to cash indicates that selling is likely to continue. Bitcoin investments also clearly declined this year compared to last year: 27.2 billion dollars in 2024 is significantly less than 41.6 billion dollars,” Rusher noted.
Tokenized gold is rising as an important driver of growth.
Despite this broader weakness, Rusher emphasized that selling pressure has not shifted to the sector of tokenized RWA assets. He pointed out that the sector is still largely overlooked by the broader crypto market, even though it has offered some of the best returns this year.
Growth has been partly fueled by a global increase in demand for gold. The value of gold has continuously broken new records, and tokenized gold products have particularly gained strong momentum from this.
Tokenized gold has actually risen by 227% from one billion dollars to over 3.27 billion dollars this year, and its sector – RWA commodities – is one of the biggest growth areas of the year. The year 2025 started with only four gold products, but by the end of the year there are already 15 products in the field, including gold, oil, wheat, platinum, soybeans, and others,” the director emphasized.
Additionally, Trust Wallet's General Counsel Shehram Khattak noted that tokenized gold has the potential to become a strong competitor to Bitcoin.
The situation is such that you actually start to think about real-world assets, for example, the tokenization of assets. When tokenized gold is implemented properly, it is a significant factor. Bitcoin is strongly used as a value store. If this is the case, tokenized gold could become quite a significant competitor to Bitcoin,” he noted.
According to Rusher, the growth of the sector is influenced not only by significant institutional demand but also by increasing participation from private investors. He noted that private investors are turning to stable, on-chain assets and are not leaving the entire market even during major fluctuations.
This variable year has really shaped this sector and made it a strong and vibrant growth area. This is a very positive sign for the broader growth of crypto, as RWA asset holdings bring stability and liquidity remains in crypto even in difficult times. RWAs are definitely the future of crypto and deserve much more attention,” he added.
The tokenization market could rise to 100,000,000,000 dollars by the year 2026.
Looking to the future, Jesse Knutson, Chief Operating Officer of Bitfinex Securities, has estimated that the tokenization market as a whole will grow to at least 100 billion dollars by the end of 2026.
According to him, tokenized fixed income products will remain the largest segment in the near future, while at the same time the share of tokenized stocks of all tokenized assets gradually increases.
Knutson added that the continuous tokenization of stocks attracts more and more private investors and helps expand the investor base of tokenized assets.
Tokenization can open regulated access to investment opportunities like microfinance, litigation finance products, or bitcoin hash rate contracts – assets not found in traditional markets. We expect this sentiment to continue into 2026, when more alternative assets, innovative Bitcoin mining-linked fixed income products, and tokenized ETFs will enter the market,” he mentioned to BeInCrypto.
Previously, Plumen CEO Chris Yin also predicted 10-20 times growth in both value and user numbers by 2026, even under cautious assumptions. Therefore, as the RWA sector grows, its performance in 2026 is likely to be a significant trend to watch.
