Fidelity Asserts Tokenisation & RWAs Could be “2025’s Killer App”

A leading TradFi asset manager claims onchain RWAs could double by 2026.

Published: Jan 10, 2025 at 14:10

Fidelity Digital Assets, an investment arm of the TradFi giant boasting $5.8T in discretionary assets, has highlighted RWAs and tokenization as an area to watch in 2025.

Publishing its 2025 ‘Look Ahead’ thesis, Fidelity Digital Assets argues it’s not too late for sidelined investors to take positions in crypto markets, speculating that the ongoing bullrun still has plenty of legs.

What’s driving Fidelty’s optimism for the year ahead, and how can investors position themselves in Solana RWAs?

Onchain RWAs to Double Within the Year

Often earmarked as the bridge between TradFi and DeFi, the tokenization of RWAs (Real World Assets) is slated as one of the biggest growth and adoption opportunities for the crypto industry.

Legacy financial systems typically suffer from sluggish processing times and expensive intermediary fees, making them inaccessible to the general public. Onchain RWAs bypass these constraints, enabling traders and investors to interact with permissionless and cost-effective markets from anywhere in the world.

“The total nominal amount of real-world assets on-chain currently sits at $14 billion, up from $8 billion in 2023.41 In our opinion, it would not be unreasonable to expect this number to double from where it currently is one year from now.” - Fidelity Digital Assets

Heavyweights across TradFi have echoed this sentiment, with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink asserting that the “tokenization of securities” is the “next generation for markets.”

Widely considered the most performant and scalable Layer-1 blockchain in crypto, Solana is a natural fit for onchain RWA markets. Emerging protocols like Remora Markets aim to democratize traditional markets, allowing users to trade stocks like Tesla and Nvidia directly on-chain, 365 days a year.

Like Fink, Solana co-founder Raj Gokal is a staunch advocate of bringing tokenized assets. to Solana. Speaking at Multicoin Summit, Gokal outlined which emerging metas he expected to shine in 2025, including DePIN, AI Agents, and onchain equities.

Disclaimer: Remora Markets and SolanaFloor are owned and operated by Step Finance

Solana ETPs Critical to Closing Gap on Ethereum

While acknowledging that “Solana’s revenue and TVL are improving at a faster rate than Ethereum’s”, Fidelity Digital Assets argues that Solana’s growth comes from cyclical trends like memecoin trading.

The firm contends that this makes Solana’s value proposition more speculative, suggesting that $SOL may be less resilient than Ethereum during future bear markets.

Fidelity Digital Assets argues that Ethereum is still a far more accessible asset than Solana, due largely to the availability of spot Ethereum ETF. However, the firm contends that regulatory changes, perhaps influenced by changing administration in the White House, could remove Ethereum’s advantage and level the playing field between crypto’s biggest smart contract platforms.