For years, tokenization of real-world assets sat in a gray zone between promise and pilot. Compelling in theory, but slow to reach institutional scale. That is now changing.
In its newly released “Tokenization of Real-World Assets: State of the Market Report 2025,” Tabb Forum documents a clear shift. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries and money-market funds are moving into real production, banks are running tokenized settlement and repo workflows, and regulators are providing enough clarity for boards and risk committees to move forward. The question, as the report frames it, is no longer if tokenization scales, but how it scales and how quickly institutions adapt.
One of the strongest signals that tokenization is becoming infrastructure, not experimentation, is where adoption is occurring. The report highlights activity from firms such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, UBS, Franklin Templeton, and Northern Trust, all deploying tokenized instruments inside existing institutional frameworks rather than as parallel crypto products. Tokenization is emerging as a modernization layer for settlement, collateral mobility, cash management, and operational efficiency, not as a speculative overlay.
A critical enabler of this shift is data and observability. As Amberdata’s Head of Research, Mike Marshall, is quoted in the report:
“Accessing and monitoring tokenized assets is not the same as plugging into Bloomberg. You are working across multiple ledgers, inconsistent standards, and distributed data sources. Institutions need verifiable, continuous data, which means leveraging infrastructure designed specifically for digital assets.”
That distinction matters. Tokenization does not reduce complexity, it relocates it. Institutions now manage on-chain and off-chain systems in parallel, navigate fragmented execution venues, and reconcile multiple books and records. Without institutional-grade data, compliance, and monitoring, tokenization cannot move from pilot to scale.
The Tabb Forum report goes further, outlining the strategic drivers pushing adoption, including faster settlement, capital efficiency, expanded access to private markets, and the rise of tokenized cash as a new treasury primitive. It also does not shy away from the constraints, particularly interoperability, regulatory fragmentation, secondary-market liquidity, and identity and compliance controls as prerequisites for operating on public blockchains.
The takeaway is pragmatic rather than promotional. Tokenization is no longer a narrative about future transformation. It is a narrative about targeted workflows, operational pain points, and infrastructure choices that allow institutions to move faster while preserving control, transparency, and regulatory integrity.
For firms evaluating whether, where, and how to engage, the full report provides a grounded, detailed view of what is working today, what is still challenging, and what early adopters are doing differently.
Read the full Tabb Forum report to understand how tokenization is becoming part of capital markets infrastructure, and what that means for your firm.