BlackRock Drives Tokenized Assets Toward $4 Trillion

Standard Chartered Bank published a research note on May 18, 2026, projecting that tokenized assets could reach $4 trillion by end-2028, split roughly evenly between stablecoins and real-world assets — a forecast that coincides with BlackRock filing two new SEC applications for on-chain fund structures earlier that month. The bank's projection, cited by Standard Chartered Bank Research, arrived as BlackRock reported record assets under management of $12.53 trillion for Q2 2025, a 17.7% year-over-year increase. BlackRock's two SEC filings, submitted on May 8, 2026, proposed a new tokenized Treasury reserve fund and on-chain shares for an existing $7 billion money-market fund, both structured in partnership with Securitize. The filings follow the 2024 launch of BUIDL — BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund — which had grown to roughly $2.5 billion in assets by mid-May 2026. According to CoinDesk's coverage of the May 2026 fund filings, the broader tokenized real-world asset market had grown more than 200% over the prior year and exceeded $30 billion, citing rwa.xyz data.

BlackRock's Q2 2025 results, disclosed in its BlackRock Form 8-K SEC filing, showed $152 billion in year-to-date net inflows led by a record first half for iShares ETFs, alongside private markets and cash net inflows. Diluted earnings per share came in at $10.19, or $12.05 as adjusted. Digital assets within the firm's AUM surged 329.3% during the quarter, a figure that reflects both the appreciation of existing holdings and new client allocations into crypto-linked products. The firm also closed its acquisition of HPS Investment Partners on July 1, adding $165 billion of client AUM and $118 billion of fee-paying AUM, and had acquired Preqin for $3.2 billion in March 2025 to expand its private markets data capabilities.

The tokenized Treasury sector, which BUIDL anchors alongside competing products, was estimated at approximately $11 billion as of mid-May 2026, while the overall RWA market — spanning tokenized Treasuries, corporate bonds, and real estate — stood at roughly $26 billion according to The Block's analysis of the filings. Those figures sit below the rwa.xyz-sourced $30 billion-plus figure cited by CoinDesk, a discrepancy that reflects differing methodological scope and timing across aggregators. The Nasdaq analysis of BlackRock's Q2 AUM growth separately noted the digital assets surge as a distinct driver within the firm's overall AUM expansion.

The Forbes framing of BlackRock's scale as a catalyst for institutional tokenization adoption draws on a well-documented pattern: BUIDL's growth from launch to $2.5 billion in roughly two years established a benchmark for institutional-grade on-chain fund structures, and the May 2026 SEC filings extend that architecture to a stablecoin reserve vehicle and a larger existing fund. The regulatory backdrop has also shifted materially — the GENIUS Act, which established a federal framework for payment stablecoins, became law on July 18, 2025, providing a statutory basis for the stablecoin reserve vehicle BlackRock proposed in its May 8 filings.

What the May 2026 SEC filings and the Standard Chartered forecast do not establish is equally important to note. The filings do not confirm launch dates, minimum investment thresholds, or the specific blockchain networks on which the new fund structures will operate. Standard Chartered's $4 trillion projection is a research estimate with a two-and-a-half-year horizon, not a regulatory commitment or a contracted pipeline figure. The filings do not disclose which institutional clients have committed capital to the proposed structures, nor do they specify the fee arrangements between BlackRock and Securitize for the new vehicles.

The immediate concrete effect of BlackRock's May 8 filings is that two new tokenized fund structures are now formally before the SEC for review, extending the firm's on-chain product range beyond BUIDL. The filings do not confirm regulatory approval, a live product available to investors, or a disclosed timeline for when either the tokenized Treasury reserve fund or the on-chain money-market share class will begin accepting subscriptions.