Standard Chartered: $4T in tokenized assets on-chain by 2028

Standard Chartered’s digital assets team forecasts $4 trillion in tokenized assets will be on-chain by the end of 2028. The bank expects half of that value to be stablecoins and half to be real-world assets. The forecast appears in a report by Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research.

The report defines composability as the ability for a single on-chain position to earn yield, act as collateral and remain tradable at the same time. Off-chain setups require separate intermediaries and legal agreements to achieve those functions.

Kendrick cites BlackRock’s BUIDL fund as an example. The fund holds about $2.7 billion in tokenized Treasury exposure. The tokenized Treasury product cited in the report earns roughly 4% yield, backs stablecoin issuance and is reused as collateral on lending platforms such as Aave.

Standard Chartered identifies three channels that would drive protocol revenue: more assets moving on-chain, a larger share of those assets deposited into DeFi and a higher portion borrowed against. The report points to rising demand for USD Coin and an increasing share of that supply being lent across DeFi venues as early evidence.

Kendrick wrote, “Tokenized assets will reach $4T by the end of 2028 (half in stablecoins and half in RWAs). This rapid increase in assets on-chain will require a huge uplift in throughput on DeFi protocols. Well-established DeFi protocols with strong risk metrics and governance should benefit the most. The asset prices of these DeFi protocols will benefit accordingly.”

The report flags regulatory clarity as a potential catalyst for institutional migration. It cites a pending CLARITY Act and notes prediction markets that price the bill’s passage in 2026 at roughly 64%.

Standard Chartered estimates roughly 1,000 times more value sits off-chain than on-chain today, the report says.

The report warns that institutional-scale activity would require higher DeFi throughput and more conservative risk frameworks. It anticipates established protocols with professional governance and audited risk models would capture most inflows, while newer or less-audited platforms could face sharper drawdowns. The report identifies the next practical test as whether corporate treasuries and institutional investors begin depositing tokenized assets into public lending markets at scale.