The market for tokenized goods has approached a capitalization level of $4 billion. This growth coincided with excitement around precious metals: gold, silver, and platinum reached record highs, boosting interest in the niche of real-world assets (RWA) on the blockchain. However, the impact of this demand on the tokenized asset market itself remains limited, and no significant changes in the market structure have yet occurred.
Growth in Tokenized Goods Capitalization
The capitalization of the tokenized goods segment has approached $4 billion, driven by investor attention to precious metals. On Friday, December 26, gold neared $4530 per ounce, and this movement partially reflected increased interest in metal-backed tokens. The connection between the cryptocurrency market and metal price dynamics is discussed in the article on gold and silver price growth, which explores the relationships between prices and capital flows.
Overall RWA Market
The RWA market as a whole grew by 11% over the past month, reaching a total value of $393 billion. Among tokenized assets, gold-backed instruments lead: Tether Gold with a capitalization of $174 billion and Paxos Gold with $161 billion, making them prominent players in the niche.
Advantages of Tokenized Assets
Tokenized goods attract investors with a low entry threshold and the ability to trade around the clock, unlike traditional markets. At the same time, key elements, including liquidity, depend on classical financial infrastructure, which limits their full autonomy and restrains a rapid transition to fully on-chain operations.
Forecasts and Prospects
Standard Chartered analysts expect the capitalization of the RWA sector (excluding stablecoins) to reach $2 trillion by 2028, highlighting expectations for significant growth in the niche. Ethereum plays an important role in this development: it accounts for 65% of the RWA market share, amounting to $127 billion, indicating a concentration of projects and liquidity on this platform. At the same time, in terms of on-chain activity, tokenization still lags behind more mass-market directions, such as stablecoin exchange operations, which remains a limitation for growth.
Why This Matters
If you mine in Russia, these events do not directly change your mining, but they provide context for understanding demand for metal-backed tokens. Investor interest in gold tokens and Ethereum's high share in RWA mean that liquidity and infrastructure development will concentrate around specific platforms and instruments. Meanwhile, limited token autonomy and dependence on classical financial infrastructure may maintain volatility and bottlenecks in liquidity access.
What to Do?
- Monitor the liquidity of tokens you are interested in — quickly closing a position may be difficult if demand is concentrated on a few assets.
- Keep in mind that trading tokenized goods occurs 24/7, but settlements and fiat withdrawals depend on traditional channels.
- Watch developments on Ethereum and RWA analytics to understand where liquidity concentrates and which instruments become leading.