Tokenized real-world assets surged 420% to $31.6B since 2025. Moody's outlines three adoption paths, one that could pressure payment processors and bank deposits. Next catalyst: AI payment integration.
Moody’s Ratings published a report Tuesday confirming that major U.S. banks and financial intermediaries are building infrastructure for a future where tokenized assets become mainstream. The readiness work is happening now, even though most executives expect adoption to begin slowly and then hit an inflection point that reorders market share and revenue pools.
The surface-level take is reassuring: tokenization remains small, banks have time to adapt, and legacy systems will coexist with blockchain rails for years. The better market read is that the same banks are quietly preparing for a scenario that, if it materialises, could compress the economics of payment processors, correspondent banks, and the deposit bases of smaller institutions. The report outlines three adoption paths – one of them explicitly disruptive – and the industry’s own behaviour suggests it is taking that tail risk seriously.
Moody’s spoke with banks and financial market intermediaries and found that nearly every major institution has already established digital asset divisions or innovation units and has joined pilot programmes for blockchain-based settlement and tokenized deposits. The conversations revealed a consensus that early tokenization will centre on simpler products – funds and short-term instruments – while traditional systems continue running in parallel.
What changed is not the pace of live activity; it is the scale of institutional staffing and testing. The report notes that cryptocurrency trading, cross-border retail payments, and a handful of institutional applications are the only areas where blockchain-based finance is used at scale today. The pipeline of internal projects is broad enough that the switch from pilot to scaled operation could be faster than many expect once a catalyst arrives.
Data from RWA.xyz puts numbers behind the trend. The tokenized real-world asset market has expanded more than 420% since the start of 2025, reaching $31.6 billion as of Thursday. That growth is coming from a low base. The important signal is the trajectory.
Moody’s laid out three possible paths for the financial system, each with different consequences for existing infrastructure.
Under what the agency calls its most likely scenario, tokenized finance expands gradually through stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and regulated digital cash. Incumbent banks, asset managers, and financial infrastructure firms keep their dominant positions. Products improve incrementally; settlement gets faster; revenue pools stay largely intact. This path is an evolution of the current system, not a replacement.
A slower outcome could emerge if legal uncertainty, regulatory obstacles, and weak consumer demand cap activity. Tokenized finance would remain limited to narrow applications with little impact on the existing financial architecture. This scenario essentially represents a continuation of the status quo, where blockchain-based finance exists without crossing into the core of the system.
The agency’s rapid-growth scenario is the one that demands a risk manager’s attention. In this outcome, stablecoins and tokenized assets become widely used for on-chain settlement, putting direct pressure on payment processors, correspondent banks, and parts of the traditional settlement network that earn revenue from delays and fragmented infrastructure. For smaller and mid-sized banks, deposit balances could also face pressure if customers move funds into blockchain-based financial systems in volume.
Risk to watch: Rapid tokenization adoption would compress revenues of payment processors and correspondent banks that rely on settlement delays.
The disruption threat is concentrated in the plumbing of finance. Tokenization does not need to replace all of banking to damage specific revenue streams.
These are not hypothetical risks in a world where stablecoin market caps already exceed $200 billion and where institutional pilots are testing tokenized deposits for wholesale settlement. The vulnerability sits inside business lines that produce steady, often overlooked revenue.
Timing is the variable that separates an orderly transition from a disruptive one. ARK Invest projects that digital assets – encompassing Bitcoin, decentralised finance, stablecoins, and tokenized real-world assets – could grow into a $28 trillion market by 2030. That would imply a compound growth rate high enough to move the entire financial system.
Macro investor Jordi Visser offered a nearer-term catalyst.
The agentic AI piece matters because it introduces a new demand driver. Autonomous agents making payments, settling trades, or managing treasury allocations will gravitate toward programmable, always-on, low-friction infrastructure. Tokenized money fits that profile more naturally than batch-processed bank rails.
Morgan Stanley signalled its view earlier this year by appointing veteran executive Amy Oldenburg to lead a newly formed crypto unit. The move came weeks after the bank disclosed plans to introduce three crypto exchange-traded funds and a crypto wallet offering.
That hire is not a pilot. It is a commitment of senior talent and brand credibility to a unit that will need to navigate compliance, product design, and client demand simultaneously. Other large banks have made similar moves. Morgan Stanley’s sequence – ETFs, wallet, dedicated leadership – suggests a commercial roadmap, not just a research project.
Moody’s Corporation (MCO stock page) carries an AlphaScala Score of 53/100, indicating a Mixed signal in the Financials sector. The company is literally rating the risk of the very transformation that could affect its own client base. Morgan Stanley (MS stock page) scores 59/100 – Moderate – suggesting the stock is neither cheap nor expensive relative to the opportunity set.
Both scores sit in a middle range that reflects the uncertainty embedded in the tokenization conversation. A slow adoption path validates current valuations; a rapid one could reprice the stocks of banks that have already built the infrastructure to capture the shift, while punishing those that have not.
The broader crypto market (crypto market analysis) remains the benchmark for sentiment around tokenization. As long as digital asset prices and stablecoin volumes are climbing, the institutional buildout continues. A prolonged bear market in crypto would slow that investment, delaying the tipping point and reducing the near-term disruption risk.
Practical rule: The speed of tokenization adoption is not a binary call. It moves asset-by-asset and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. Traders watching the risk should track new product launches, regulatory filings for tokenized funds, and any uptick in stablecoin settlement volumes as leading indicators. When those three signals light up simultaneously, the rapid-growth scenario stops being a tail risk and starts becoming the base case.
Prepared with AlphaScala research tooling and grounded in primary market data: live prices, fundamentals, SEC filings, hedge-fund holdings, and insider activity. Each story is checked against AlphaScala publishing rules before release. Educational coverage, not personalized advice.