A brand new fourth quarter 2025 survey from tokenization platform Brickken suggests that almost all of real-world asset (RWA) issuers are utilizing tokenization to lift capital somewhat than to unlock secondary market liquidity, based on a report shared with CoinDesk.
Amongst respondents, 53.8% mentioned capital formation and fundraising effectivity is their foremost cause for tokenizing, whereas 15.4% mentioned the necessity for liquidity was their foremost incentive. One other 38.4% mentioned liquidity was not wanted, whereas 46.2% mentioned they count on secondary market liquidity inside six to 12 months.
“What we’re seeing is a shift away from tokenization as a buzzword and toward tokenization as a financial infrastructure layer,” Jordi Esturi, CMO at Brickken, informed CoinDesk. “Issuers are using it to solve real problems: capital access, investor reach, and operational complexity.”
Brickken’s report comes as main U.S. inventory exchanges announce plans to broaden buying and selling fashions for tokenized property, together with 24/7 markets. CME Group mentioned they’ll supply around-the-clock buying and selling for its crypto derivatives by Might 29, whereas the New York Inventory Trade (NYSE) and Nasdaq shared their plans to supply 24/7 tokenized inventory buying and selling.
Esturi mentioned the exchanges’ plans have extra to do with enterprise mannequin evolution than with an issuer demand disconnect. “It’s less about getting ahead of demand and more about exchanges evolving their business model,” he mentioned. “Exchanges increase revenue by increasing trading volume, and extending trading hours is a natural lever.”
On the similar time, many issuers are nonetheless in what he described because the section of validation, throughout which they show regulatory buildings, take a look at investor urge for food and digitize issuance processes. “Liquidity is not yet their primary focus because they are building foundations,” he emphasised, including that they view tokenization as “the upstream engine that feeds trading venues.”
The Brickken CMO additionally mentioned that with out compliant, structured, high-quality property coming into the market, secondary buying and selling platforms don’t have anything significant to commerce. “The true value creation happens at the issuance layer,” Esturi famous.
Non-compulsory liquidity versus necessary
Whereas 38.4% of surveyed issuers mentioned liquidity was not required, Esturi identified the distinction between “optional liquidity and mandatory liquidity,” noting that many non-public market issuers function on long-term horizons. “Liquidity is inevitable, but it must scale in parallel with issuance volume and institutional adoption, not ahead of it.”
Ondo, which started with tokenized U.S. Treasuries and now has greater than $2 billion in property, is targeted on shares and ETFs particularly due to their “strong price discovery, deep liquidity and clear valuation,” Chief Technique Officer Ian de Bode mentioned in a current interview with CoinDesk.
“You tokenize something either to make it easier to access or to use it as collateral,” de Bode mentioned. “Stocks fit both, and they price like assets people actually understand, unlike a building in Manhattan. If TradFi moves to 24/7, that’s a godsend,” de Bode added. “It’s our biggest bottleneck.”
The survey reveals that tokenization is already operational for a lot of members: 69.2% of respondents reported finishing the tokenization course of and being dwell, 23.1% are in progress, and seven.7% are nonetheless within the planning section.
Laws are nonetheless a problem
Regulation is a significant concern amongst these surveyed: 53.8% of respondents mentioned regulation slowed their operations, whereas 30.8% reported partial or contextual regulatory friction. In complete, 84.6% skilled some degree of regulatory drag. By comparability, 13% cited know-how or improvement challenges as the toughest a part of tokenization.
“Compliance isn’t something issuers are dealing with after launch; it’s something they’re taking into account and configuring from day one,” mentioned Alvaro Garrido, founding associate at Authorized Node. “We see an increasing demand for legal structures tailored to the specific project needs and underlying technology.”
The report additionally suggests tokenization is increasing past actual property. Actual property accounted for 10.7% of property tokenized or deliberate for tokenization, in contrast with 28.6% for fairness/shares and 17.9% for IP and entertainment-related property. Respondents spanned sectors together with know-how platforms (31.6%), leisure (15.8%), non-public credit score (15.8%), renewable vitality (5.3%), banking (5.3%), carbon property (5.2%), aerospace (5.3%) and hospitality (5.2%).
“The real bridge between TradFi and DeFi is not ideological,” mentioned Patrick Hennes, head of digital asset servicing at DZ PRIVATBANK. “It is issuance infrastructure that translates regulatory requirements, investor protection and asset servicing standards into programmable systems.”
