McKinsey estimates market value of tokenized RWAs to hit $4t

American multinational consultancy firm McKinsey predicts that the market value of tokenized real-world assets will rise to up to $4 trillion within six years.

Consulting giant McKinsey & Company says the market value of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) could reach nearly $2 trillion by 2030 in a base scenario, adding that the value could double to $4 trillion in a bullish scenario.

This adoption will likely be driven by mutual funds, bonds, exchange-traded notes (ETNs), loans, securitization and alternative funds, the New York-based company says in a blog post. But analysts at McKinsey are tempering expectations, saying they are “less optimistic” about the bullish forecast.

Addressing the adoption rate and timing, analysts suggest that both moments are expected to “vary across asset classes” based on differences in “expected benefits, feasibility, duration of impact, and risk appetite of market participants.”

“Asset classes with larger market caps, higher friction in the value chain today, less mature traditional infrastructure, or lower liquidity are more likely to benefit greatly from tokenization.”

McKinsey

McKinsey also acknowledges a scenario in which RWAs fail to gain the traction expected, and even then predicts that market value could rise from current levels to nearly $1 trillion as the industry remains in the “early stages of adoption.” .

According to CoinGecko data, the total market value of RWAs stands at approximately $6.8 billion as of mid-June. Many startups in the industry, such as Propy and ONDO Finance, only started rolling out their offerings after 2020; This shows that they are still in the early stages and if all goes well, significant moves are expected in the future.

Market value of RWAs | Source: CoinGecko

Centrifuge, an infrastructure protocol for decentralized financing of real-world assets on the blockchain, was founded in 2017 but raised $15 million in Series A financing in 2024 alone, with investments from ParaFi Capital, Greenfield, Arrington Capital, and Circle Ventures, among others. .

Despite the promising outlook, McKinsey warns that the current situation is still evolving. “There are risks as well as rewards for early movers,” the firm notes, highlighting the lack of regulatory and legal clarity in many jurisdictions and underlining the need for “widespread availability of wholesale tokenized cash and deposits for payment.” It hasn’t happened yet.