Speculation Built Crypto — But Only Real-World Adoption Will Sustain It
Crypto’s early relevance came from meme coins, leverage, and price tricks that rewarded hype over substance — a double-edged sword that brought money and headlines into the market but also blurred the industry’s true purpose.
Years later, the focus is changing. Instead of asking how high tokens can trade, people are now asking if blockchains can have real economic weight. And the change can be seen in where big money is going.
Tokenized real-world assets now sit at about $30 billion on-chain in 2025, as InvestaX report shows. This is a fourfold increase over three years, and it isn’t retail speculation hunting momentum; it’s a sign that institutions are testing blockchains to see if they can be used as financial infrastructure.
Tokenization Marks Crypto’s Adulthood
A cursory glance at the headlines emblazoned on numerous online crypto publications will verify the truth of the argument above.
Firms with little interest in narratives and plenty to lose from technical failure have been sending the strongest signal of this shift. These include BlackRock, whose tokenized treasury product, BUIDL, is no longer a pilot but a multi-billion-dollar behemoth, as well as Franklin Templeton’s recent placement of tokenized money market funds on public ledgers.
In a recent column for The Economist, Larry Fink said that tokenization is the next step in building market infrastructure. He pointed out that the early crypto boom made it hard to see the idea clearly, but underneath all that noise was a system that could move assets faster, with fewer middlemen, and with records that automatically match up. That’s not just excitement about an idea; it makes sense for operations.
The structure of the market tells the same story. Private credit is now worth more than half of all tokenized assets, followed by U.S. Treasuries, according to InvestaX. These yield-bearing …
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