Tiger Research: Asset Tokenization Reshapes Capital Markets
Tiger Research published a long-form report tracing capital market infrastructure from 1996 to the present, arguing that asset tokenization represents a foundational shift in market rails. The analysis contends this RWA infrastructure trend goes far beyond a surface-level product development.
Yuri Konnov
The scale of onchain issuance provides the report's quantitative baseline. According to rwa.xyz, onchain-issued assets reached approximately USD 34 billion as of May 2026, more than 20 times the USD 1.5 billion recorded in early 2020. When represented assets — where ownership is recorded onchain while physical assets remain with custodians — are included, the aggregate figure rises to approximately USD 360 billion. Tiger Research treats this distinction as analytically significant: the gap between the two numbers reflects the volume of institutional activity that depends on offchain custody arrangements rather than full onchain settlement.
The report organises its evidence around four capital market verticals where onchain infrastructure is already processing real volume. In short-term funding, Broadridge's Distributed Ledger Repo platform, built on the Canton Network, processed USD 7.7 trillion in monthly settlement volume with an average daily volume of USD 368 billion as of April 2026. In securities settlement, the DTCC partnered with Digital Asset and received a no-action letter from the SEC in December 2025 to tokenize U.S. Treasuries, targeting a minimum viable product in the first half of 2026. In capital raising, the Hong Kong government issued HKD 6 billion in digital green bonds through HSBC Orion in February 2024, compressing settlement from T+5 to T+1, with bonds deployed as repo collateral within days of issuance.
Canton's institutional pedigree is central to Tiger Research's infrastructure argument. The network was developed by Digital Asset, which received investment from JPMorgan, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and DTCC. The report notes that permissionless blockchains carry risk weights of up to 1,250% under BCBS Group 2 classification, a regulatory constraint that effectively channels institutional adoption toward permissioned architectures such as Canton. In Hong Kong, the Canton Network has been adopted as government bond settlement infrastructure at a payment institution operating under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Asia-Pacific adoption patterns feature prominently in the report's regional analysis. In South Korea, following STO legislation passed in January 2026, Hanwha Investment & Securities partnered with Digital Asset, while Shinhan Asset Management, Shinhan Securities, and KB Securities signed agreements with the Canton Foundation in June 2026. In Japan, the Japan Securities Clearing Corporation, Nomura Holdings, and Mizuho Financial Group launched a proof-of-concept using Japanese government bonds. Digital Asset's institutional track record — which includes building settlement infrastructure for the Australian Securities Exchange and DTCC's credit-derivatives systems — underpins its role as the common technical counterparty across multiple jurisdictions.
The report opens with a framing device drawn from BlackRock's 2026 shareholder letter, in which CEO Larry Fink wrote: "We believe tokenization today may be at a similar point as the internet in 1996". Tiger Research uses the 1996 internet analogy to argue that the current period is one of infrastructure standardisation rather than product proliferation — a phase in which the choice of rails determines competitive position for years. Seungsik Yoon, who leads Tiger Research's Research Center and authored the report, stated: "Capital market infrastructure, once built, does not change easily. The gap between institutions that join while standards are still being set and those that try to catch up later only widens over time."
The report also references a fourth vertical — digital payments via a private B2B stablecoin infrastructure built by Bitwave on Canton — though the BloomingBit coverage of the Tiger Research findings does not include volume or transaction figures for that segment, and the press release text was truncated before full details were provided.
What remains unclear. The Tiger Research report does not disclose the specific haircut or margin treatment applied to tokenized Treasuries under the DTCC–Digital Asset arrangement, nor does it confirm whether the MVP targeting the first half of 2026 was delivered on schedule. The report does not quantify the B2B stablecoin volume processed by Bitwave on Canton, identify the specific payment institution under the HKMA that adopted Canton for bond settlement, or provide the fee structures or governance terms of the Canton Foundation agreements signed by Shinhan Asset Management, Shinhan Securities, and KB Securities in June 2026. The proof-of-concept involving JSCC, Nomura, and Mizuho is described without a start date, scope, or outcome metrics.
The immediate effect of the report is to document that onchain infrastructure is already processing institutional volume at scale — USD 7.7 trillion monthly through Broadridge's repo platform alone — rather than remaining at the pilot stage. What the report does not establish is a standardised legal or technical framework across the four verticals it identifies, a common settlement finality standard across jurisdictions, or any regulatory equivalence determination that would allow assets settled on Canton in one jurisdiction to be recognised as collateral in another.
