Is 2026 the year tokenized assets go mainstream?

Tokenized real-world assets, better known as RWAs, have been hyped as digital currency’s next big breakthrough for years. The idea is simple enough: take something that exists in the real world, like gold, real estate, or commodities, and represent it digitally on a blockchain so it can be traded faster, cheaper, and more globally.

In practice, however, adoption has been slow.

• RWAs next big breakthrough for ‘crypto’
• AI powers commodities
• Regulation is still the top priority
• Tokenization must beat old systems
• Tokenized assets gain popularity in Asia
• Closing thoughts

At a recent Road to Consensus panel hosted by Coins.ph, industry leaders didn’t pretend otherwise. Instead of selling a glossy future, they asked a more challenging and more critical question: Does tokenization actually make things better?

That skepticism, coming from people already working with tokenized assets, may be the clearest sign that the RWA conversation is finally maturing.

Tokenized gold already exists, but few notice.

Coins.ph CEO Wei Zhou made one thing clear: tokenized assets are not theoretical on his platform.

“So we have two gold tokens listed on Coins right now,” Zhou said. “One is Tether Gold, one is Pax Gold, XAUT is the ticker, right, that’s already listed on Coins.”

These tokens are backed by physical gold held in custody. Users don’t need to store bars or deal with vaults; they just hold a digital token that represents ownership.

Yet despite working exactly as designed, tokenized gold hasn’t set the market on fire.

That doesn’t mean Zhou is giving up on the category. In fact, he wants more.

“I’ve been telling my team to go find silver, copper, platinum, just go get them all,” he said.

Why now? Because demand for physical resources is being reshaped by something much bigger than digital currency.

AI is pulling commodities back into focus

According to Zhou, the global race to build AI systems, data centers, and robotics factories is driving renewed interest in commodities, not just gold, but the raw materials that power modern infrastructure.

“They’re actually going to be building AI factories and robotic factories and manufacturing,” he said. “And then what do you need? They’re going to need power… you need commodities, you need the stuff that we dig out of Earth.”

This is where tokenization could matter. By putting commodities on-chain, exchanges could make it easier for investors to access these markets, trade them globally, and move capital faster, especially in regions where traditional access is limited.

But there’s a catch.

Regulation still decides what’s possible

Not all assets are treated equally by regulators, and that distinction shapes what platforms like Coins.ph can realistically offer.

“If it’s a security, then it’s going to be hard for me to list it,” Zhou said. “But if it’s a commodity, then it’s tokenized, it’s a token of a commodity. It’s not that bad.”

That gray area—whether something is classified as a commodity or a security—remains one of the biggest hurdles for tokenized RWAs worldwide. It’s also why many projects never move beyond pilot programs.

Why Asia could be where RWAs finally stick

Despite the skepticism, Zhou hinted that Asia could be where tokenized assets gain real traction first.

Zhou framed it in terms of scale. “You have to almost come back to a macro picture of like what are some of the biggest asset classes in the world,” he said. “Real estate is like $200 trillion, gold is like $30 trillion… Bitcoin’s $2 trillion.”

If even a small portion of those markets moves on-chain in a meaningful way, tokenized RWAs stop being a niche digital currency experiment and start becoming financial infrastructure.

Less hype, more hard questions

The panel didn’t claim that 2026 will definitely be the breakout year for tokenized assets. What it did show is that the conversation has shifted.

Builders are no longer asking: “What can we tokenize?”

They’re asking: “What’s worth tokenizing and why?”

In a space long dominated by hype cycles, that shift toward practicality may be the most bullish signal of all.

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