February in Tokenization
February 2026 Was the Month the Institutional Rotation Became Undeniable
IXS Finance Monthly RWA Recap — February 2026
Key Takeaway:
February closed with on-chain RWAs at $24 to $25 billion while DeFi TVL fell 25%. Tokenized Treasuries crossed $10 billion, growing from $2 billion to $10 billion in just 18 months. Institutions are driving the flows. Retail is still watching. The bottleneck is no longer issuance but infrastructure that can handle scale.
February Was a Risk-Off Month For Crypto
ETF outflows. Thinner order books. Speculative tokens hit hard. DeFi TVL down roughly 25%.
And on-chain real-world assets finished the month at $24 to $25 billion, up 6 to 13% depending on the dataset.
That divergence is the story of February. Not the crash. The rotation.
When sentiment turns negative and capital looks for somewhere to hide, it doesn’t leave crypto entirely anymore. It moves inside crypto, away from speculative beta and into yield-bearing, regulated, dollar-denominated instruments that make sense on an institutional balance sheet.
That behavior used to be theoretical. February made it empirical.
RWA holders are up more than 30% month-on-month. Addresses holding any form of tokenized asset now exceed 220 million. The total tokenized stack including stablecoins and cash equivalents sits just under $300 billion. These are not pilot numbers. They are adoption numbers.
February Headline: Tokenized U.S. Treasuries crossing $10 billion.
From $2 billion to $10 billion in 18 months. Up 136% year-to-date. Now accounting for well over one-third of all on-chain RWA value.
To understand why this happened so fast, you have to understand what these instruments actually are. They are not crypto-native yield experiments. They are short-duration U.S. government debt sitting on public blockchain rails, delivering 4.5 to 5% APY, with transparent on-chain pricing and instant settlement. The off-chain risk model is established. The regulatory trajectory is constructive, with the GENIUS Act in the US, MiCA in the EU, and active UK consultation frameworks underway.
For a conservative institutional allocator looking to move part of a cash or collateral stack on-chain, tokenized Treasuries are the easiest argument to make internally. No speculative risk. Familiar underlying asset. Blockchain settlement as an operational upgrade rather than a paradigm shift.
BlackRock’s BUIDL holds around $2.1billion and roughly 21% market share. Franklin Templeton’s BENJI sits at $1.2 billion. Circle’s USYC at $1.7 billion. Superstate’s USTB at $890 million. These names are not crypto-native startups. They are some of the most recognizable institutions in global asset management.
Analysts project $14 to $15 billion in tokenized Treasury TVL by year-end 2026. Given the trajectory, that looks conservative.
A Consensus Hong Kong panel in February, featuring Animoca Brands, Mastercard, and Robinhood, put the institutional picture plainly.
Current RWA demand is overwhelmingly institutional. Tokenized Treasuries, money-market funds, and high-grade credit. Not retail speculation. Institutions like UBS and the NYSE are now actively working on secondary-market liquidity and turning tokenization into a real capital-markets channel.
Retail investors remain largely passive. Most hold RWAs indirectly through crypto platforms or tokenized funds. Direct retail participation requires secondary-market depth, transparent price discovery, and clear exit routes, none of which are mature enough yet.
That will change. But February confirmed the sequencing: institutions first, infrastructure second, retail third.
Three structural themes defined February and will shape the rest of 2026.
The first is concentration risk. Growth is heavily skewed toward a small set of blue-chip issuers. That lowers perceived counterparty risk and signals market maturity. But it also creates fragility. If any one large product faces operational or regulatory disruption, the secondary market isn’t deep enough yet to absorb the exit cleanly.
The second is that rails matter more than narratives now. The active challenge is not launching more tokenized products. It’s stitching existing ones into DTCC, NYSE, CME, and bank-grade custody workflows. The Bank of England published a discussion paper in February exploring how RWA and risk-weighted asset data will be reported in future prudential regimes. Tokenization is now on core regulatory agendas, not just innovation sandboxes.
The third is regional policy divergence. Western frameworks broadly support regulated tokenization of cash, Treasuries, and funds. China has taken a controlled path, permitting offshore tokenization of China-adjacent assets under supervision while keeping onshore issuance tightly restricted. That’s pushing China-related RWA activity into Hong Kong, Singapore, and the UAE. The regulatory map is fragmenting, which creates both complexity and opportunity for platforms that can operate across jurisdictions.
Where IXS Finance fits
February confirmed something the weekly data had been suggesting for months.
The constraint is no longer supply of tokenized assets. BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Circle, and Superstate have that covered. The constraint is the infrastructure that lets institutions move in and out of those positions, across chains, at scale, without hitting liquidity walls or compliance dead ends.
On-chain RWAs sit at $24 to $25 billion today. The path to $100 billion runs through secondary market infrastructure, cross-chain liquidity, and regulated trading rails that institutional allocators can actually use.
That is the exact architecture IXS Finance is built around. DARE-licensed under the Securities Commission of The Bahamas. RWA-native AMM designed for regulated assets. Multi-chain distribution across the networks where tokenized assets are being issued and traded.
February didn’t just validate RWAs as a category. It validated the infrastructure layer as the critical path for everything that comes next.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did RWAs grow while DeFi fell 25% in the same month?
They serve different capital functions. DeFi TVL is tied to crypto sentiment, so when prices fall, collateral values drop and capital exits. RWA value is anchored to off-chain yields and institutional demand, which don’t correlate with crypto beta. The divergence in February confirms RWAs are now a distinct capital category with different flow dynamics.
What drove tokenized Treasuries from $2 billion to $10 billion in 18 months?
Three things converging: institutional demand for compliant on-chain yield, improving regulatory clarity across US and EU frameworks, and credible issuers like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton providing products that fit existing institutional workflows. The underlying asset is US government debt, which carries no exotic risk. The blockchain layer is purely an operational upgrade.
What is concentration risk in tokenized Treasuries?
A small number of large products dominate the market. That creates trust and brand clarity, but it also means thin secondary liquidity relative to the total value locked. If a major holder exits a product like BUIDL, which carries a $5 million minimum investment, there may not be enough secondary market depth to absorb it without pricing dislocations.
What does retail participation in RWAs actually require?
Deeper secondary markets, transparent price discovery, and clear exit routes. Currently most retail exposure is indirect, through crypto platforms or tokenized fund wrappers. Direct participation becomes practical when the infrastructure matures enough to support smaller position sizes and faster settlement at competitive cost. That is likely a 2026 to 2027 story.
Sources: talos.com, pintu.co.id, fensory.com, bitcointaf.com, ca.finance.yahoo.com, ainvest.com, bankofengland.co.uk, reuters.com, info.arkm.com, app.rwa.xyz