The market for tokenized U.S. Treasuries on the Ethereum network has reached a historic high. According to Token Terminal, the market capitalization of this segment has hit $8 billion.
The market cap of tokenized U.S. Treasuries on @ethereum is at an ATH of ~$8 billion, up ~100% over the past six months.
— Token Terminal 📊 (@tokenterminal) May 5, 2026
Key drivers of growth: BUIDL (Securitize), JTRSY (Centrifuge), iBENJI (Franklin Templeton), WTGXX (WisdomTree), USDY (Ondo Finance), and USTB (Superstate). pic.twitter.com/WNE56wSyhE
Over the past six months, the figure has doubled. The main growth drivers include:
- BUIDL (Securitize);
- JTRSY (Centrifuge);
- BENJI (Franklin Templeton);
- WTGXX (WisdomTree);
- USDY (Ondo Finance);
- USTB (Superstate).
Treasuries remain one of the most sought-after asset classes in this segment. U.S. government bonds are considered the most stable and liquid investment instruments in the world.
Tokenization via XRP Ledger
JPMorgan and Mastercard conducted the first cross-border operation redeeming a tokenized Treasury fund via the Ripple blockchain.
As part of the pilot, Ondo Finance completed a deal for OUSG on the XRP Ledger. The Multi-Token Network from Mastercard sent instructions to JPMorgan Kinexys, and dollars were credited to Ripple's account in Singapore.
Ondo described this as the first historical instance where a public blockchain and global banking infrastructure settled a tokenized fund in real time.
Thrilled to work with the teams at JP Morgan, Ripple, and Mastercard on this.
— Ben Grossman (@ben_grossman) May 6, 2026
This is how crypto and tradfi rails come together: the first time tokenized tbills are settled cross border and banks, near real time.
Go in real time from tokenized tbills in bank in country 1 —>… https://t.co/hyuzJ4E9Me
This pilot continues the experiments that JPMorgan and Ondo initiated in May 2025, where they tested the transfer of tokenized bonds between public networks.
Segment Still in Early Stages
Analysts from Pantera Capital believe that the market for tokenized assets is still far from a fully operational on-chain financial system. Nevertheless, the market capitalization of the segment has already reached $31.1 billion.
Source: RWA.xyz.The fund evaluated 524 digitized assets across 11 categories using its Tokenization Progress Index (TPI), which measures project maturity on a scale from 1 to 5. The average market score was only 2.04.
According to Pantera:
- Approximately 77.6% of assets remain at the "wrapper" level over traditional infrastructure;
- 11.1% belong to a hybrid model;
- Only 2.7% can be considered truly native on-chain tools.
Analysts compared the current state of the industry to the early internet—"a newspaper on a website"—where new technologies still replicate old models instead of creating fundamentally new formats.
Pantera believes that most issuers are still merely transferring traditional financial products to blockchain without leveraging the key advantages of the technology: programmability, composability, instant settlements, and automated asset management.
Key Obstacles
Among the main issues in the RWA segment, experts highlighted:
- Dependence on custodians and centralized intermediaries;
- Limited mechanisms for asset issuance and redemption;
- Poor integration with DeFi;
- Low process automation.
According to the report, 91.1% of assets still use closed models for issuance and redemption. Only 13 projects have managed to implement nearly fully autonomous mechanics for creation and burning.
Only 10.6% of assets possess significant DeFi composability. The exception is stablecoins, which Pantera identified as the only segment that has already achieved substantial real utility in the on-chain economy.
Growth is Present
Growth rates continue to accelerate. In 2025, 168 new tokenized assets were launched—up from 78 the previous year. The total market volume surged from approximately $200 billion to $320 billion.
Source: Pantera.The key segment remains stablecoins, alongside the rapid growth of tokenized U.S. Treasuries.
However, Pantera emphasized that true maturity will only occur when such assets cease to be digital copies and begin to fully utilize the advantages of blockchain.
Kraken's Perspective
A similar assessment of the pace of adoption was provided by Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi in a conversation with The Block. He stated that tokenized equities are unlikely to quickly change the operations of major U.S. financial institutions.
He noted that the xStocks exchange product has processed approximately $5 billion in transactions since its launch in June 2025. Sethi described RWA as the next stage of development for the crypto market following Bitcoin, altcoins, and stablecoins.
However, he warned that even clearer regulations in the United States will not lead to immediate mass adoption by banks, brokers, and other players.
"I don't think this will open the floodgates as many expect. Brokers, banks, and institutions won't change their settlement systems overnight," he said.
Sethi added that current demand for tokenized equities is primarily coming from fintech companies outside the U.S. market—in Mexico, Brazil, African countries, and Southeast Asia.
He believes it will take five to ten years for such instruments to see widespread use.
As a reminder, in May, Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin predicted a complete transition of the global economy to on-chain.