Wall Street’s next blockchain chapter may be led less by crypto-native startups and more by the banks, exchanges and market infrastructure firms that already control traditional finance.

A new Citi Institute report on Monday projected the tokenized financial asset market could grow from about $17 billion today to $5.5 trillion by 2030 in its base case, with a bull-case estimate of $8.2 trillion. But the report’s bigger message is that tokenization is moving beyond pilots and into the core plumbing of capital markets.

Rather than private markets or real estate leading the shift, Citi expects public equities, U.S. Treasuries and other liquid collateral instruments to drive adoption. That reframes tokenization as a market structure story, not just a blockchain innovation story.

Public Markets Take The Lead

Citi estimates tokenized public equities could reach $3.6 trillion by 2030, making them the largest projected category within the tokenized asset market. Public fixed income could account for another $1.4 trillion, led by U.S. Treasury bills and money market funds.

The report assumes about 3% of the U.S. public equity market could be tokenized by 2030, helped by younger investors who expect 24/7 access, app-based investing and wallet-based financial products.

That challenges the earlier assumption that tokenization’s most obvious use case would be illiquid private assets. Citi argues that private credit, private equity and real estate remain long-term opportunities, but their adoption may be slower because these markets are less standardized, less liquid and more relationship-driven.

Wall Street Infrastructure Moves On-Chain

The strongest signal in the report is the role of major market operators.

Citi highlights DTCC, NYSE and Nasdaq as institutions integrating tokenization into issuance, trading and settlement workflows. These are not crypto firms building parallel systems outside traditional finance. They are part of the existing financial system adapting blockchain infrastructure to regulated markets.

DTCC has received regulatory clearance to offer a tokenization service for DTCC-custodied assets, with a pilot planned for late 2026. NYSE has announced plans for a tokenized securities platform, while Nasdaq has approval to enable certain stocks and ETFs to be issued, traded and settled in tokenized form.

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The implication is clear: tokenization may not replace Wall Street. It may become Wall Street’s next operating layer.

Settlement Money Becomes The Foundation

Citi says earlier tokenization efforts struggled partly because there was no reliable on-chain settlement money.

Tokenized securities only deliver full benefits if the cash leg of the transaction can also settle on-chain. That makes stablecoins, tokenized deposits and possibly CBDCs central to the next phase of adoption.

The report projects stablecoins could reach $1.9 trillion by 2030 and describes digital money as a foundation for delivery-versus-payment settlement, faster collateral movement and always-on markets.

Structural Orchestrators Could Win

One of Citi’s most important ideas is the rise of “Structural Orchestrators,” institutions that control issuance, distribution, trading and settlement rails.

These could include banks, asset managers, stablecoin issuers and infrastructure providers that combine trusted regulation with control over tokenized market workflows.

The transition, however, is unlikely to be clean. Citi expects hybrid models, where tokenized and legacy systems run side by side, to dominate in the near term. That could create operational complexity before the efficiency gains become clear.

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