Gold accounts for virtually all of the tokenised commodities market, data showed. On May 23, blockchain outlet Cryptopolitan reported that a16z Crypto estimated the tokenised commodities market at about $5.1 billion, with tokenised gold making up about $5 billion of that total.

Silver and all other commodities combined totalled just $57.6 million. Gold accounted for about 98% of the tokenised commodities market. Crude oil, agricultural products, energy and compute tokens had negligible shares.

The overall tokenised asset market excluding stablecoins recently moved above $30 billion and hovered around $34 billion. The market was under $3 billion in mid-2024, but rose sharply after the GENIUS Act, a U.S. stablecoin-related law, was passed.

Recent market growth was led by U.S. Treasuries. Tokenised assets backed by U.S. Treasuries were used as a way to manage idle stablecoins while approaching traditional money market yields. Bonds became the largest tokenised asset class at $15.2 billion, and asset managers such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton responded to related demand.

Growth rates differed by asset class. Asset-backed credit reached $1 billion 185 days after its first on-chain record. It included tokenised home equity lines of credit and loan vault tokens. Structured finance, centred on tokenised reinsurance contracts and bitcoin mining notes, topped $1 billion in less than 2 years. By contrast, venture capital and active strategies took more than 7 years to reach $1 billion. Government debt and commodities exceeded $1 billion in about 2 to 3 years.

Among blockchains hosting tokenised assets, Ethereum was the largest at $15.7 billion. BNB Chain stood at $4 billion, Solana at $2.2 billion, Stellar at $1.7 billion and the Liquid Network at $1.5 billion. XRP Ledger, ZKsync Era and Arbitrum were estimated at around $1 billion each.

Still, an expanding market capitalisation did not translate directly into increased on-chain use. Bonds were the largest asset class, but only about $800 million, around 5% of supply, was used in DeFi protocols. DeFi use of precious metals was also low. Most tokenised gold was held on-chain rather than used as programmable collateral or as an asset within other applications.

a16z Crypto assessed that some assets are freely transferred and used across on-chain applications, while others use the blockchain only as a record-keeping infrastructure, limiting transferability and composability. It said many assets currently classified as tokenised are closer to digitisation.

The tally shows that even as the tokenised asset market has grown rapidly, actual demand differs sharply by asset class. The commodities segment was concentrated in gold, while overall market expansion was driven by U.S. Treasuries. It also highlighted the gap between market size and on-chain usage.