IMF: The market size of tokenized RWA is approximately 65 billion USD, which may become a new channel for leverage accumulation and liquidity risk

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) released the October "Global Financial Stability Report," which for the first time discusses the tokenized market in a dedicated chapter. The report shows that as of the end of July, the public market size of tokenized Real World Assets (RWA), excluding repos and stablecoins, is approximately $65 billion, with credit accounting for about $30.4 billion, money market funds about $17.5 billion, and stocks about $2.3 billion. The average daily trading volume of tokenized repos over 30 days reached $303 billion.

The report states that the issuance of tokenized stocks is highly concentrated, with Ondo Finance and Backed Finance (xStocks) together accounting for over 70%. More than 50% of trades occur outside regular trading hours for U.S. stocks, with about 80% of trade sizes being less than one share, volatility being about 1.5 times that of traditional markets, and liquidity being significantly lower.

The IMF believes that while the scale of tokenized assets is small, it may bring efficiency improvements in multiple areas, but it could also create new channels for leverage accumulation and liquidity and maturity mismatches, exacerbating technological and infrastructure risks, with current systemic risks remaining limited. The IMF also pointed out that in the absence of interoperable central bank currencies, stablecoins and tokenized deposits may become the main settlement tools in the tokenized capital market, leading to issuer credit risk and concentration risk.