A new Deutsche Bank Research Institute primer, “Asset Tokenization 101,” makes a clean point: tokenization is growing fast—but most of the market is still tokenized cash, and the next wave will be won by teams that can operationalize the full lifecycle, not just issue tokens. The headline: the tokenized market is now ~$331B (Nov 2025), but stablecoins are ~90% of that. Tokenized RWAs ex-stablecoins are ~ $33B—early, but real.
1. “Tokenization growth” = stablecoins… for now. DB’s data shows the uncomfortable truth: the category is still dominated by stablecoins. The takeaway isn’t bearish—it’s clarifying: cash moves first, and it becomes the settlement layer that pulls other assets onchain.
2. Fixed income is the next credible wedge. DB frames fixed income (and tokenized Treasuries / funds) as the next major wave: standardized terms, predictable cashflows, and clear institutional demand for on-chain cash management.
3. The real bottleneck isn’t issuance — it’s integrity between on-chain and off-chain. DB flags the hard production problems: regulatory fragmentation, thin secondary liquidity, and the messy reality that some projects still rely on off-chain “official” registers / reconciliation even when tokens trade on-chain. That’s where scale breaks—or survives.