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Honestly, it’s difficult to recap the biggest stories of 2024 simply because there have been so many, but if I had to engage in this exercise, I would have to say that tokenization – and BlackRock’s big entry into the cryptography – would be high on the list.
Tokenized treasuries currently stand at around $4 billion, according to RWA.xyz, representing a small portion of the RWA pie. Currently, the total on-chain RWA (excluding stablecoins) exceeds $15.2 billion.
However, Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, thinks it would be realistic to remove some of the tokenization efforts that have taken place on private chains that no one uses, which could drop the total value to around $5 billion .
VanEck and Bitwise believe the RWA space could reach $50 billion – a number that Domingo says is within reach.
“If you look at the rate at which we’re going to grow, the Treasury space, which alone is expected to be multi-trillion dollars next year because stablecoins are at $200 billion right now. This should therefore represent between 10 and 20 billion dollars of Treasury bills. And then you start adding in some of the new products that we’re going to be rolling out… integrations with DeFi, etc. I think the industry aggregation…is expected to reach $50 billion in the next 12 to 18 months, and I hope we maintain our 20% (to) 25% market share as the leader in sector,” Domingo said.
As for this year’s success, Domingo believes tokenization hit the mainstream not only because of bigwigs entering the space, but also because there was “the utility of tokens.”
“We started with simple features like peer-to-peer transferability, so faster transferability that makes the asset more useful on-chain, like the use cases we worked on – using BUIDL as collateral -etc. This all relies on the ability to efficiently move the security on-chain (and) liquidity through certain buybacks with stablecoins, etc. “, he explained.
Clearly, Domingo doesn’t think tokenization’s moment in the spotlight is a unique affair. He is confident that we will continue to see the RWA space adapt and evolve throughout the next year.
For Domingo, the big deal is the aforementioned integration with DeFi, which Securitize is exploring as part of its next venture.
“This will allow the industry to grow 10 times. That’s my personal view,” he told me. But it will be good for both RWA and DeFi, which will be able to feed off each other’s success.
As for next year’s challenges, these will be twofold for Securitize.
First, Domingo jokingly told me that he needed to stop being a bottleneck (which, he added, was why Securitize was excited to bring on Michael Sonnenshein at the end of last year), then it was about acquiring talent.
Domingo said hiring in a bull market is very “difficult” because of the amount of competition in the field, but it’s not a serious problem, given that the regulatory overhang is no longer a big concern once we move into this next administration.
Forget the year of the snake – it’s the year of tokenization.
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