💰 Real-World Assets Are Eating DeFi: CoinGecko’s 2025 RWA Report Breakdown

Tokenized treasuries. Gold on-chain. Fiat-backed stablecoins exploding. The world isn’t ditching TradFi — it’s uploading it to the blockchain.

🌐 What the Hell Are RWAs?

Real-World Assets (RWAs) = physical or traditional financial assets made liquid and programmable via blockchain.

Think:

• 🏛 U.S. Treasuries
• 🥇 Gold
• 💵 Fiat-backed stablecoins
• 📈 Stocks
• 🧾 Private loans

Tokenization turns these into borderless, 24/7 digital assets — tradable without intermediaries. It’s TradFi, but DeFi-native.

🚀 Treasuries Go Parabolic

The RWA MVP? Tokenized U.S. Treasuries — up +545% YoY.

📊 Market cap hit 5.6B by April 2025 🏆 BlackRock’s BUIDL alone = 2.5B (44% share) ⚙️ Ethereum still dominates, but Stellar is catching up

Institutions love yield + safety — and now they get it on-chain.

💸 Stablecoins Break Records

Stablecoins hit 225B total market cap — an all-time high.

📈 Grew +76% YoY (+97B) 🔝 USDT & USDC added 93B combined 🌱 New entrants like USDtb (Ethena) and USD0 (Usual) entered top 10

Stablecoins = the gateway drug of crypto finance — and the world is hooked.

🥇 Gold Is Glittering — On-Chain

Global chaos = gold rush. But this time, it’s tokenized.

📦 Gold-backed tokens grew +68% to 1.9B 🪙 Top players: Tether Gold (XAUT) and PAX Gold (PAXG) — 84% market share 📈 Price-driven growth, not supply-driven = real demand

Gold bugs, meet gas fees.

💳 Private Credit Is Back (Kinda)

On-chain lending — aka tokenized private credit — is recovering post-2022 crash.

📌 Active loans: 547M 📍 Maple Finance owns 67% of that 📉 Still just a third of 2022 peak levels

The rails are being rebuilt — but adoption is still catching up.

🧾 Tokenized Stocks: Still a Baby, But Growing Fast

Not huge (yet) — but growing like mad.

📊 Market cap: 11.4M 📈 Growth: +300% in 2024 🎯 Leaders: Backed Finance, Dinari 🛠️ Kraken & Coinbase preparing tokenized stock support

Tradable equity on-chain = future ETFs go brrrr.

🏦 The Institutional Floodgate Is Opening

Institutions love:

✔️ Transparency ✔️ Regulatory compatibility ✔️ Steady yield ✔️ DeFi rails

RWAs tick every box. And with clearer regs on the way, CoinGecko says we’re just getting started.

This isn’t the future of finance. It’s the on-chain upgrade of everything.

🧭 TL;DR

📈 Tokenized U.S. Treasuries exploded +545%, led by BlackRock 💵 Stablecoins hit 225B market cap — new all-time high 🥇 Tokenized gold grew +68%, driven by real demand 💳 On-chain lending shows signs of recovery (but still small) 📉 Tokenized stocks tiny but surging +300% 🏦 Institutions are going all-in on RWAs — and the rails are ready

In 2025, real-world assets didn’t just join crypto. They became the headline act.