Money market funds (MMFs), Treasury products, private credit and, more recently, stocks have all been tokenized as financial institutions and crypto firms expand their onchain offerings.
The next step is using those assets as collateral in lending markets and across decentralized finance (DeFi), according to Marcin Kaźmierczak, co-founder of blockchain oracle provider RedStone.
RedStone supplies price data for DeFi applications. According to DeFiLlama, it is the third-largest blockchain oracle by total value secured (TVS), securing about $4.1bn across 95 protocols.
“Right now, only a very small fraction of those tokenized assets are used as collateral or as any kind of programmable layer on top of DeFi protocols,” Kaźmierczak told Sandmark in an exclusive interview during the TokenizeThis 2026 conference in New York City.
Tokenization’s real value
The comments come as tokenization continues to grow across both traditional finance and crypto. According to RWA.xyz, tokenized assets on public blockchains are now worth more than $31.5bn across about 944,000 holders.
But Kaźmierczak argues that simply putting assets onchain isn’t enough. “If you’re just tokenizing, for example, a money market fund, okay, it’s 24/7, it’s accessible globally,” he said. “You get the instant settlement, but outside of that, you don’t have much more value.”
He said the real advantage of tokenization is that assets on a shared blockchain can become programmable, allowing developers to build financial apps around them instead of just using blockchain as a record-keeping system.
“The beauty of crypto is actually that you have this one ledger on which all those assets are sitting, and you can add logic to that,” he added.
Over the past several months, companies including Coinbase, Robinhood and Kraken have launched tokenized stock products, while asset managers continue bringing money funds, Treasuries and private credit onchain.
“I believe last year was about stablecoins,” Kaźmierczak said. “This year has been a lot about tokenization. I believe the rest of this year and 2027 are going to be about the usability of those assets.”
One of the biggest opportunities, he said, is lending. Rather than selling a tokenized stock or money market fund to raise cash, investors could eventually use those assets as collateral to borrow against them while retaining ownership.
He also believes the market has passed an inflection point. “We are above $31bn of tokenized assets,” he said. “The moment we crossed around $20bn to $25bn, you could already see it accelerating.”
A new challenge to DeFi
But using tokenized assets in DeFi also creates new challenges. Crypto markets settle almost instantly, but many traditional assets don’t. Some tokenized funds and private credit products can still take a long time to redeem.
That becomes a problem when those assets are used as collateral in DeFi protocols, where positions are often liquidated immediately if borrowers fall below the required levels.
Kaźmierczak said the industry will need to bridge that timing gap if tokenized assets are going to work smoothly in DeFi.
“If [the] CLARITY [Act] passes, people are going to want to use these assets in a programmatic way,” he said. “This mismatch between instant settlement and how traditional finance works is going to be one of the big topics.”
The CLARITY Act is a bipartisan bill that would establish a regulatory framework for digital assets in the US and clarify whether crypto assets fall under the oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The legislation passed the House in 2025 and, after clearing the Senate Banking Committee in May 2026, is now awaiting consideration by the full Senate.
Institutions are not asking if, but how
The shift is also changing conversations with financial institutions. According to Kaźmierczak, firms spent much of the past year exploring blockchain technology. Currently, they are more focused on putting products into the market quickly.
“We’ve had meetings with the London Stock Exchange, Invesco, Fidelity and Citi,” he said. “One thing is certain – they already have budgets and teams to do this kind of expansion.”
RedStone has also seen growing demand from traditional firms looking for price data, risk monitoring and other infrastructure needed to support tokenized assets.
“One thing we’ve noticed this year is that institutions are asking many more questions about security after recent hacks,” he said. “They’re looking for guidance on best practices before interacting with onchain infrastructure.”
Last year, RedStone acquired the onchain credit rating platform Credora, which monitors how the risk profile of tokenized assets and DeFi strategies changes over time. Some risks can include vulnerabilities in smart contracts, liquidity shortages and changes in the quality of collateral backing tokenized assets.
Looking ahead
Kaźmierczak believes the next stage of tokenization will depend largely on regulation in the US. He said clearer rules would encourage more financial institutions to move beyond experimenting with blockchain and launch more products.
He also expects tokenized assets to play a much larger role in DeFi in a year’s time. “I think [that June 2027 headlines will read] that the percentage of tokenized assets that are used in DeFi crossed 50%,” he said. “Right now, it’s probably at around 2%.”
When asked whether he was bullish or bearish on the current crypto landscape, Kaźmierczak said he was “bearish on foolish applications and rookie models that were sometimes prevalent in 2022 and 2023.”
However, he noted that he is “extremely bullish” on finance properly going onchain and utilizing some of the technologies that we’ve already built. He pointed to firms such as BlackRock, Fidelity and JPMorgan, which have all invested in digital asset teams.
“When I’m talking with those large players, they’re not only excited, but they’re taking steps to move forward,” he said, adding that as long as they’re around, it would be pretty hard for anything to fail.
Leave a comment