Fidelity: Institutions Allergic to Onchain Exit After First Bite 🦠

Financial institutions are accelerating their move toward tokenized onchain infrastructure, with industry executives saying the shift is now irreversible. "In the last 18 months, if you look at the push by true institutions to move toward an onchain future, it's really no going back," said Matthew Horne, head of digital asset strategists at Fidelity Investments, during a panel discussion at Longitude Singapore on Thursday. Horne told the audience, which included WSJ's Jihye Lee, UBS' Ka Yan Chan, Securitize's Chongwu Du and Maple's Sidney Powell, that US asset managers are particularly incentivized to tokenize assets because the process provides better investor access and helps them "reach new markets."

Demand for tokenized assets rose by 41% during the past 30 days as the number of holders topped 493,000, according to RWA.xyz. That figure measures the total number of addresses holding tokenized real world assets, excluding stablecoins. Treasuries and equities could draw billions of dollars onchain as the staples of portfolio construction, said Ka Yan Chan, head of digital assets business development at UBS. "What would really drive the billions to the trillions is when market infrastructure players like the Fed or DTCC make the first move in transforming the custody layer to a tokenized platform," Chan said, adding that industry players could "piggyback" on these initiatives by building the distribution layer for tokenized assets.

Regulatory momentum has followed. In December 2025, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a "no action" letter to a subsidiary of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, enabling it to offer a new securities market tokenization service. In September, the SEC approved a temporary exemption allowing limited trading of tokenized US stocks on certain onchain venues. Earlier on Thursday, Securitize announced the launch of trading of the tokenized shares of a dozen of the most widely held US traded stocks that will include security entitlements.

More than $1.2 billion in capital moved onchain during the past 30 days, boosting the combined total across stablecoins and tokenized assets to more than $323 billion, according to OnchainBenchmark. Standard Chartered's global head of digital asset research, Geoff Kendrick, predicted in August that tokenized RWAs may reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028. Hong Kong has separately been moving ahead with tokenized bond initiatives aimed at building out real market infrastructure.