The $37 Billion Tokenization Boom Has An Ownership Problem

What Happened

Myles Harrison, Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank, argues institutional investors tend to begin from those legal and economic rights rather than from blockchain selection.

Securitize put the model into use when its common stock began trading on the NYSE under SECZ on July 2. Eligible US investors are also able to access tokenized SECZ through Securitize.

The tokens launched on Avalanche and Solana while representing the same common stock trading on the NYSE, giving one security both conventional and on-chain forms of ownership.

💡 Did you know? Robinhood’s 2025 “SpaceX stock tokens” gave investors derivative exposure rather than direct ownership of SpaceX shares. The controversy exposed a central risk in tokenization: owning a token does not necessarily put the holder on the company’s share register or grant the rights attached to the underlying equity.

Market Context

How big is the tokenization market? Well, it’s big enough that the grand machinery of capital markets is now flooding in. Some of the key stats from 2026 show the shocking scale of growth in tokenized assets.

Treasury and money-market products accounted for $16.16 billion, roughly 43% of the total.

Transfer agents have long maintained security-holder records, processed changes in ownership, and administered distributions. With tokenized securities, recordkeeping becomes more closely tied to the trade because an on-chain transfer can feed into the official register, making the quality and speed of recordkeeping part of the trading experience itself.

In March, the NYSE named Securitize as the first digital transfer agent eligible to mint blockchain-native securities for corporate and ETF issuers on its planned digital trading platform, while the two companies also agreed to work on standards covering digital transfer agents and tokenization agents.

Why It Matters

Tokenized RWAs reached $37.29 billion on public blockchains as of August 3, excluding stablecoins.

Commodities stood at $4.60 billion, while equities and ETFs reached $2.16 billion.

Details

What’s more, US regulators are beginning to draw firmer lines. In January, SEC staff divided tokenized securities into issuer-sponsored products and third-party-created versions.

An issuer can integrate distributed-ledger technology into its “master securityholder file,” allowing an on-chain transfer to move the security on the official register, while third-party structures can leave legal ownership recorded elsewhere and give the token holder a separate entitlement.

BeInCrypto spoke to Eva Meng, Head of Matrixdock, Myles Harrison, Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank, Billy Miller, COO of Securitize, and Roshan Robert, CEO of OKX US, about tokenization’s real battleground.

Ownership Begins with Settlement

Eva Meng, Head of Matrixdock, places settlement at the center of the ownership question.

“An on-chain ledger can accurately record token ownership without establishing whether the underlying asset is available for settlement. The real test comes when the claim is exercised: can recorded ownership actually be carried through to settlement?”

Matrixdock’s tokenized gold (XAUm) asset shows how such rights pass from an onchain balance into physical delivery.

In April 2025, a holder burned 32.148 XAUm and received a one-kilogram LBMA gold bar within T+3 of the redemption request, linking the token burn to a corresponding release from custody.

The stakes rise as tokenization reaches securities, where ownership determines access to dividends, voting rights and corporate actions.

“The token isn’t the asset. It’s a representation of a claim, and that claim only means something if a regulated institution stands behind it and is legally obliged to honor it. When I speak to institutional clients, their questions are never about which chain an asset sits on. They want to know who owes them what, under which law, and what happens if something goes wrong. Those answers live in the record of ownership, not in the token itself.”

Securitize COO Billy Miller draws a similar line between tokens created around securities held elsewhere and issuer-sponsored tokens incorporated into the ownership record itself.

“In an issuer-sponsored model, the issuer authorizes tokenization with the token representing the actual security and ownership, akin to how book-entry is a digital representation of shares held at the transfer agent.”

Transfer Agents

Traditional exchanges are already building around this role.