Think about someone who has always wanted to invest in commercial real estate but never had the required capital. They understand the long-term value of real estate and have watched others build wealth through it, yet the high entry cost has always kept that opportunity out of reach. For years, that has been the reality for many retail investors.
Access to certain investments has not been possible because they couldn’t afford the large sums traditionally required to participate. But that’s beginning to change. Around the world, financial institutions are exploring tokenization as a practical way to make investing more accessible. As a result, investors no longer have to worry about purchasing an entire asset.
Tokenization converts ownership rights into digital tokens, which makes it possible to buy only a portion rather than the whole thing. This might be surprising to some, especially now that many people only associate the crypto industry with volatile digital currencies. When people are focused on the Bitcoin price, market rallies or sharp corrections, they might easily overlook the technology powering these assets.
Yet it’s the very technology that’s drawing the attention of many investment firms. In fact, interest in tokenization alone has grown so quickly that some of the world’s biggest financial players are already investing heavily in it. It’s a big part of why Deloitte expects the global market for tokenized real estate to reach $4 trillion by 2035.
Boston Consulting Group also weighed in, projecting that the market for tokenized illiquid assets could grow to $16 trillion by 2030. But why are these projections so significant?
Fractional ownership is lowering the entry barrier
Affordability has always been one of the biggest barriers to investing. Take a sector like real estate, for instance. Buying a commercial property in a major city isn’t something most people can do on a whim. In many cases, investors are looking at a price tag in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars.
For the average investor, that’s enough to make the opportunity feel completely out of reach. And it’s not just real estate. Plenty of alternative investments come with steep minimum buy-ins that leave smaller investors watching from the sidelines.
But with tokenization, things are way different. Since it splits ownership into thousands of digital tokens, investors can now own just a small fraction of an asset. This is striking when considering how it plays out in the real world. Take Dubai, for instance. According to Dubai Land Department 2025 data, the city’s early tokenization projects attracted significant interest, with one project receiving full funding in just 1 minute and 58 seconds from 149 investors representing 35 nationalities.
Well, that’s striking! Not really because Dubai is representative of every market, but because it shows what happens when capital ownership stops being a deciding factor. The same principle is extending to private credit. According to 4IRE Labs, private credit instruments now account for over 60% of all tokenized RWAs.
Injecting liquidity into traditionally illiquid markets
Selling a real estate property can be quite cumbersome. The seller may end up taking weeks or months just trying to find a buyer. And that’s without factoring in the legal paperwork, agent commissions and lengthy ownership transfers. The challenge comes in when the seller needs immediate access to their money. Unlike publicly traded stocks, selling many RWAs at the click of a button is almost impossible.
Tokenization changes that by introducing a model where transferring assets is much simpler than transferring ownership through traditional channels. It doesn’t necessarily mean every asset will become instantly liquid, but it could make buying and selling significantly more efficient. And since tokens are tradeable 24/7, there’s greater financial flexibility and freedom.
Such factors help explain why established financial institutions have started experimenting with tokenization. This is largely because they’re exploring ways to make capital move more efficiently across financial markets. And as EY recently noted, 63% of institutional investors expect to increase their exposure to tokenized assets in 2026, up from 57% in 2025.
Regulation will determine how quickly adoption grows
Of course, technology alone won’t determine whether tokenization becomes mainstream. Financial markets are built on trust. And if investors must adopt a new technology, it will largely be because they are confident their ownership rights are secure. That means regulation will play just as important a role as innovation.
Fortunately, progress is already underway. Consider a country like the United Arab Emirates. Regulators have already established the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) to provide greater legal clarity and ensure investors receive the same protections they expect in traditional financial markets.
That’s important because institutional investors rarely commit billions of dollars based on technology alone. They also look for regulatory certainty and reliable market infrastructure. And as those pieces continue falling into place, tokenization becomes much easier to adopt at scale.