Standard Chartered: $4T On-Chain Tokenized Assets by 2028

Standard Chartered’s digital assets team forecasts $4 trillion in tokenized assets will sit on-chain by the end of 2028, with stablecoins and real-world assets each making up about half of that total. The bank projects decentralized finance will act as the native back-end for that capital because of on-chain composability.

Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, describes composability as the property that lets a single on-chain position earn yield, serve as collateral and remain tradable at the same time. Kendrick argues that replicating those three functions off-chain requires separate intermediaries and legal agreements.

The report cites BlackRock’s BUIDL fund as an example. The fund holds about $2.7 billion in tokenized Treasury products that Standard Chartered says earn roughly 4% in yield, help back stablecoins and are being used as collateral on lending markets such as Aave.

Standard Chartered identifies three linked drivers that will determine protocol revenue as assets migrate on-chain: more total assets moving on-chain; a rising share of those assets being deposited into DeFi protocols; and a higher proportion of deposited assets being borrowed against. The bank points to Circle’s USDC as a working example, noting increases in market capitalization and the share lent across DeFi venues.

Kendrick highlighted potential regulatory and legislative catalysts for institutional migration into open lending rails and identified the CLARITY Act as a major upcoming trigger. The bank reports traders on prediction markets price the bill’s chance of passing in 2026 at roughly 64%. Standard Chartered also estimates that about 1,000 times more value currently sits off-chain than on-chain.

Standard Chartered says protocol throughput capacity will need to scale significantly to absorb $4 trillion of on-chain assets. Kendrick wrote, “Tokenized assets will reach $4T by the end of 2028.” The report notes that established protocols with conservative risk metrics and professional governance are expected to capture most inflows, while newer or less-audited platforms could face sharper drawdown risk if used at institutional scale.

The bank identifies the next practical test as whether large institutional treasurers and asset managers begin parking tokenized funds in open lending venues at scale. Standard Chartered states that sustained volume into regulated, audited DeFi markets would indicate greater institutional use of tokenized assets for cash management and credit intermediation.