Call of the decade or Embarrassment of a gigantic proportion?

Call of the decade or Embarrassment of a gigantic proportion?

Hot on the heels of the McKinsey vs BCG debate on the future of tokenization, Standard Chartered waded into the battle with a paper that is either going to be the call of the decade or the embarrassment of a gigantic proportion. 

SC forecasts a tokenization market that is 15x of McKinsey’s base case. With this, Standard Chartered and McKinsey represent the top and bottom range of the forecast numbers. 

  • McKinsey - $2 trillion
  • EY - $14 trillion
  • BCG - $16 trillion
  • Standard Chartered - $30.1 trillion

Here are the 3 main pillars to SC’s forecast:

  1. $30.1 trillion - total asset tokenization market capitalization by 2034
  2. $5 trillion - total tokenized trade finance asset value
  3. Combining anchor buyer with programmable money will unlock deep-teer supplier finance

After reading through the 18 pages report, I am unconvinced about the first 2 points. Though I am quite a fan of the rationale behind point 3. 

Let’s unpack the paper and see why we agree/disagree with these key points.

$30.1 trillion - best call or giant fail

The total value of tokenized real-world assets, excluding stablecoins, standing at around USD 5 billion by early 2024, primarily across commodities, private credit, and US treasuries… With the current market trends, we expect demand for overall tokenized real-world assets to reach up to USD 30.1 trillion by 2034

It is not clear to me what exactly SC saw in the current market trends that led them to the $30.1 trillion number. 

In fact, if we dig into the current market trend, at $5 billion using SC’s own number, I am not sure what type of extrapolation assumptions are made to take tokenized commodities, private credit and US treasuries to that number. 

Tokenized Commodities (CTY)

The tokenized CTY is made almost entirely of tokenized gold according to Coinbase's latest State of Crypto report. And the 2 biggest players, making up 99% of the market, are Tether Gold and Pax Gold. Below are their total market cap growth charts since inception.


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Kene Ezeji-Okoye

Redefining Finance at Millicent Labs // Onchain Financial Systems // Digital Assets // Digital Currencies // Tokenization

5mo

Of the three firms making predictions, who has the heaviest bags?

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Scott Bourke Jr.

Growth Lead at peaq | EoT Labs | RWA & Robotics | Powering the Machine Economy |

6mo

Great write up as usual, Harvey. Thanks for sharing. Really interesting seeing all these numbers from reputable players outside of the web3 echo chamber. If it’s $2T to $30T+ I think it’ll be good for tokenization in the big picture no matter where it lands.

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Matt Pantaleone

Award Winning AI Marketing & Experience Leader | Workflow, Creative & Business Automation | Decades of Experience Scaling AI Solutions in Every Industry | Hundreds of Millions Delivered to Clients

6mo

Everything will be tokenized

Harvey L.

Building Tokenization Insight | GTM + Research + Content | Follow to learn. DM to partner | I write about tokenization adoption & help tokenization projects avoid pitfalls

6mo

Fill in the blank. The Standard Chartered prediction of 30 trillion market cap is ____ ? Suggestions a. Brave b. Glorious c. Wait. What did they say? d. …..

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Roomy Khan

Consultant and AdvisorMarketing, Public relations, Business Plans, Compliance

6mo

great

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