Morgan Stanley and management consultancy Oliver Wyman forecast that the market for tokenized assets will reach $2.3 trillion by 2030, according to research reported by The Defiant.

The projection, one of the more aggressive short-horizon estimates published jointly by a major U.S. investment bank and a tier-one consultancy, signals that institutional adoption of blockchain-based financial infrastructure is moving from pilot programs into the capital-allocation planning of the world's largest financial intermediaries.

Tokenization refers to the issuance of blockchain-based representations of traditional financial instruments — including money market fund shares, corporate bonds, private credit, and equities — that settle on distributed ledgers rather than through conventional clearing and settlement infrastructure.

What does the $2.3 trillion forecast assume?

The figure sizes the addressable opportunity for tokenized funds and related instruments, depending on issuance and adoption patterns over the next five years. It assumes continued expansion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries and money market funds, broader distribution of private credit and structured products on chain, and the eventual on-chain issuance of equities and exchange-traded products.

The Defiant's reporting frames the projection around three structural shifts: institutional appetite for 24/7 settlement, the operational efficiencies of programmability for collateral and margin, and the migration of money-market and treasury products onto chain.

The firms have not publicly disclosed the underlying growth rates, sensitivity to interest-rate cycles, or the share of the figure attributable to each asset class.

Who is leading institutional tokenization?

Major asset managers have already launched or expanded tokenized fund products, validating the institutional demand thesis. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Fidelity have all introduced tokenized U.S. Treasury and money-market vehicles in recent quarters, and several have expanded distribution across multiple blockchain networks.

The on-chain footprint of these products remains small relative to traditional fund AUM — tokenized Treasuries collectively represent a fraction of the multi-trillion-dollar U.S. money market — but growth rates have run into the triple digits year-on-year.

What are the operational implications?

If the projection materializes, tokenization would represent one of the largest transfers of financial infrastructure onto public or permissioned blockchains in the asset management industry's history.

Custody, settlement, and reporting systems would need to integrate distributed-ledger primitives alongside legacy plumbing. Regulators in the U.S. and EU would need to extend existing frameworks to cover on-chain instruments, particularly around securities tokenization, stablecoin issuance, and digital asset custody.

For Morgan Stanley, the projection extends a research agenda that has steadily widened beyond digital-asset market commentary. The firm's analysts have previously published client notes on stablecoin infrastructure, decentralized finance protocols, and the intersection of artificial intelligence with crypto markets.

Oliver Wyman, a Marsh McLennan subsidiary, has positioned itself as a strategic advisor to traditional financial institutions evaluating blockchain-based settlement and digital asset custody offerings.

What's the forward path?

The next major milestone for institutional tokenization will likely come from regulatory developments in the U.S. and EU, where frameworks for digital asset custody and securities tokenization remain in flux. Operational deployments at scale will hinge on whether regulators approve hybrid custody models that combine traditional and on-chain settlement, and whether interoperability standards between permissioned and permissionless networks reach production maturity before 2030.