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The market of real world assets (RWA) experienced a significant transformation in 2025, becoming one of the most solid and capitalized sectors in the crypto ecosystem.
Despite the focus being on memecoin, Layer 2, and political betting markets, RWAs have established themselves as a concrete and rapidly expanding reality.
Summary
RWA 2025, crypto and the rediscovery of commodity-backed assets
One of the most significant developments concerns the market of stablecoins backed by fiat currencies. Between 2024 and 2025, the capitalization of this segment increased by over 97 billion dollars, reaching a new all-time high of 224.9 billion dollars in April 2025.
This surge of +76% reflects a growing interest in stable and reliable instruments in the crypto universe.
The main driver is represented by USDT and USDC, which together constitute 93.5% of the fiat-backed stablecoins in circulation, increasing their capitalization by 56.3 and 37.6 billion dollars, respectively.
Additionally, new projects like USDtb di Ethena and USD0 di Usual have quickly gained ground, positioning themselves among the top stablecoins by market capitalization with 1.4 and 0.6 billion dollars.
On the contrary, initiatives from traditional institutions like PayPal with PYUSD and SocGen with EURCV have not yet achieved significant results, awaiting further regulatory clarifications in the United States.
The market of commodity-backed tokens, predominantly precious metals like gold, has seen a growth of 67.8%, thanks to the increase in the price of gold in an uncertain global economic context. From 2024 to 2025, the capitalization grew by 773.9 million, reaching a peak of 1.9 billion dollars.
However, this segment represents only 0.8% of the capitalization of fiat-backed stablecoin, demonstrating the still limited prevalence of physical assets in the crypto market.
Tether Gold and PAX Gold make up 84% of this market, but despite the positive trend in value, the on-chain demand has not undergone significant changes. This suggests a still primary focus on liquid and stable assets compared to tokens linked to commodities.
Tokenized Treasuries: the rise of digital government bonds
The sector of tokenized treasuries experienced a surprising growth in 2024-2025, with an increase of 544.8%, equivalent to +4.7 billion dollars, reaching a new high of 5.6 billion in capitalization in April 2025.
A significant acceleration occurred between March and April 2025, when the introduction of US trade tariffs and the worsening of global economic prospects significantly boosted interest in these instruments, with a growth of 2.3 billion (+67.1%) in just 6 weeks.
Among the protagonists, BlackRock BUIDL, launched in July 2024, has established itself as the most relevant product, holding 44% of the market share and recording a surge of 372.8% in 2025 alone. At the end of April, BUIDL represented 2.5 billion dollars of tokenized government securities.
The majority of these assets are on the blockchain Ethereum, followed by Stellar, but the number of addresses holding tokenized treasuries remains limited, just above 11,000 units, indicating a market in strong growth but still not widely spread.
On-chain private credit, that is, loans disbursed via smart contracts, grew to 546.8 million dollars in active loans in April 2025. However, this figure is far from the peak of 1.6 billion reached in 2022.
Despite the post-2022 decline, the sector shows signs of recovery. Maple Finance remains the main player, with 374 million in active loans, equivalent to 67% of the total of the main protocols. Maple has also introduced the fiat-backed stablecoin syrupUSDC to expand its presence in RWAs.
A significant decline in Q3 2024 was caused by the pivot of Centrifuge, which shifted the focus from private credit to tokenized treasuries, causing a contraction in open positions.
The impact of RWAs and future prospects
The market for tokenized stocks remains limited, with a capitalization of only 11.4 million dollars in April 2025, even though it has grown by 297% compared to the beginning of 2024. The increase of 8.6 million was mainly driven by Backed Finance.
The main suppliers in the sector are Backed Finance and Dinari, which together hold 100% of the market, with Backed leading at 77%. Additionally, the company Exodus has tokenized its shares listed on the NYSE.
The most popular product is the tokenized S&P 500 offered by Backed, which represents 53% of the entire market of tokenized stocks. Other common equity titles include giants of the technology sector.
Central to future development is the interest of centralized exchanges: Kraken plans to offer tokenized stocks based on Backed, while Coinbase intends to tokenize its own $COIN shares, thus pushing towards greater liquidity and accessibility of this segment.
The spread of real assets in crypto is redefining the boundaries of the sector, integrating traditional finance with the potential of blockchains. The growth of stablecoins, tokenized government bonds, and commodity-backed tokens reflects increased investor confidence and an expansion of on-chain applications.
However, challenges remain such as the limited spread of users, regulatory uncertainty, and the need for more robust infrastructure. Consequently, 2025 is shaping up to be a key year for consolidating this sector through technological innovations and collaborations between traditional finance and DeFi.
For investors and market operators, closely monitoring the evolution of RWA can represent a valuable opportunity to diversify portfolios and access hybrid instruments, combining security and innovation. The push towards a more transparent and accessible finance is definitively transforming the crypto landscape.