Citi says tokenized real-world assets could grow into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030, a projection that places on-chain settlement at the center of Wall Street’s next infrastructure shift. The bank’s report, “Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain,” frames stablecoin liquidity, fractional ownership and institutional adoption as the main forces that could move traditional assets onto blockchain rails.
The base case assumes that about 10% of the U.S. Treasury bill market and 3% of the U.S. public equity market become tokenized by the end of the decade. Citi also estimates that stablecoin growth could drive up to $1 trillion in new on-chain demand for U.S. Treasuries, while retail migration toward digital trading platforms could create roughly $2.6 trillion in demand for tokenized stocks.
Citi: Tokenized securities market could reach $5.5T by 2030
Citi said in its Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain report that the real-world asset tokenization market could grow from $17 billion today to $5.5 trillion by 2030, with estimates ranging from $2.7 trillion to $8.2… pic.twitter.com/OwwUCtPpFW
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Stablecoins Become the Settlement Link
Citi’s thesis rests on the idea that tokenized assets need trusted digital cash to scale. Stablecoins are treated as the bridge between tokenized securities and payment rails, allowing settlement to move faster while keeping institutional workflows tied to familiar reserve and liquidity structures.
The report points to blockchain-native efficiencies such as instant settlement, fractionalization and 24/7 trading as structural advantages. Those features could unlock liquidity across asset classes, but Citi’s framing is not purely technological. The real test is whether institutions can integrate these efficiencies without weakening custody, reporting or investor protections.
Major market infrastructure firms are already moving in that direction. DTCC, Nasdaq and the owner of the NYSE are embedding tokenization into core systems, while Citi’s partnership with Coinbase to develop institutional stablecoin capabilities shows how banks may try to connect digital cash with regulated asset markets.
Regulation Will Decide the Pace
Citi presents regulatory clarity as a condition for large-scale institutional adoption. Tokenized instruments still need to fit within existing legal frameworks, particularly around registration, counterparty risk, transparency and investor safeguards.
That uncertainty explains the wide range in Citi’s forecast. The bank sets a potential adoption band between $2.7 trillion and $8.2 trillion by 2030, depending on how quickly markets, regulators and infrastructure providers converge on workable standards.
Operationally, the shift will force firms to rethink custody, reconciliation and settlement. Citi expects experimentation before common models emerge, giving an advantage to large financial “structural orchestrators” that can combine asset custody and payment rails inside proprietary networks.
Tokenization could change execution by reducing settlement latency and enabling finer fractional positions. It also creates new governance demands, since firms will need updated risk controls for counterparty exposure, market transparency and on-chain settlement workflows.
The likely path is not a clean replacement of legacy systems. Citi expects parallel market structures to coexist for years, with traditional and tokenized rails running side by side as institutions test liquidity, custody costs and operational resilience.
The report’s broader message is that tokenization may be less about speculative crypto cycles and more about market plumbing. If Citi’s base case materializes, the most affected players will be institutional desks, prime brokers, custodians and market infrastructures that must bring assets on-chain while preserving stability and investor protections.
