Deutsche Bank sees tokenised assets market reaching $4 trillion by 2035

The market for blockchain-based bonds, funds and shares has nearly quadrupled since early 2025, highlighting accelerating adoption of tokenised financial assets. Deutsche Bank projects the tokenisation market will expand from roughly $25 billion last year to $3 trillion-$4 trillion by 2035, driven by digital representations of ownership in assets such as bonds, fund shares and real estate.

Analysis

The investable implication is not broad crypto beta; it is a gradual shift in post-trade economics. Incumbent custodians, fund administrators and market-infrastructure operators face fee-pressure risk if atomic settlement lowers reconciliation, transfer-agent and collateral-mobility costs, while firms owning regulated distribution, KYC and custody rails can preserve economics. DB's upside is therefore indirect and likely immaterial to near-term earnings unless it converts pilot activity into fee-bearing issuance, custody balances or institutional transaction volume.

Over the next 1-3 months, tokenisation headlines can support digital-asset infrastructure multiples, but the addressed market is easily overstated: much of the early activity is likely to be money-market funds, repo and private-credit wrappers rather than net-new capital formation. The key competitive question is whether issuance settles on permissioned bank-led networks or public-chain rails. A permissioned outcome favors banks and established infrastructure; public-chain adoption shifts value toward Coinbase (COIN), Ethereum-linked exposure and stablecoin issuers, while pressuring legacy recordkeeping franchises.

The 6-18 month catalyst path is regulatory recognition of tokenized securities, usable cross-border transfer rules, and collateral eligibility at major clearinghouses. Consensus may be underestimating the value of 24/7 collateral mobility in repo and fund subscriptions, but overestimating the speed at which investors will abandon established legal registries. The thesis is falsified if tokenized fund assets fail to translate into lower servicing costs, materially higher settlement velocity, or repeat institutional issuance by 2027.

DB should be treated as a watchlist beneficiary rather than a tokenisation trade: its valuation will remain dominated by rates, investment-banking execution and capital returns. A stronger expression is a barbell—regulated exchange/custody exposure against legacy workflow vendors with high manual-processing revenue—once data identify where issuance and settlement volumes are actually accruing.

Key Decisions for Investors

• No incremental DB position solely on this theme; require disclosure of recurring tokenisation revenue, custody AUC, or institutional issuance volume before underwriting earnings upside. Reassess around 2026 results and capital-markets updates.
• Build a 6-12 month watchlist long COIN versus short a legacy capital-markets workflow/recordkeeping proxy only after evidence that regulated tokenized securities are settling on public rails; missing data are chain-level settlement volumes and issuer economics, so this is not yet a live pair.
• For existing DB exposure, retain a 1-3 month event alert rather than chase positive headlines: add only if tokenisation announcements coincide with measurable corporate-bank fee growth or improved cost-income guidance; exit the thematic overlay if pilots remain non-revenue-generating through the next two reporting periods.
• Monitor BlackRock tokenized-fund flows, stablecoin regulatory milestones and clearinghouse collateral-eligibility decisions. A regulated stablecoin framework or major CCP acceptance would be a higher-conviction sector catalyst than bank market-size forecasts.