The bank's digital assets research head expects tokenized real-world assets to drive the surge over the next two to three years
Standard Chartered thinks the onchain economy is about to get a lot bigger, and not just in stablecoins.
Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, forecast that non-stablecoin assets onchain will grow 50-fold over the next two to three years. He made the call at the SALT Conference on November 3, 2026, pointing to the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) as the main engine.
What Kendrick actually projected
The forecast targets a specific slice of the market. It covers tokenized assets that are not stablecoins: think bonds, funds, and other traditional instruments recreated as tokens on a blockchain.
By mid-2026, the market for non-stablecoin RWAs was valued at approximately $35 to $40 billion. Stablecoins, by comparison, hovered around $300 to $320 billion.
Apply Kendrick’s 50x multiple to that $35 to $40 billion base, and the arithmetic lands between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion. That lines up with Standard Chartered’s prior estimate of approximately $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by the end of 2028.
In other words, the new comments sharpen an existing thesis rather than rewriting it. Kendrick is putting a multiplier on a target the bank had already sketched out.
The stablecoin timeline moved
Standard Chartered’s earlier framework called for total tokenized assets onchain to reach $4 trillion by end-2028. That figure was split evenly: $2 trillion in stablecoins and $2 trillion in non-stablecoin RWAs.
One half of that equation has slipped. Kendrick’s refined view now places the $2 trillion stablecoin milestone in 2030, pushed back from 2028, which the research attributes to evolving market dynamics.
Why the bank sees institutions, not hype
Kendrick stressed that current levels of non-stablecoin tokenized assets are tiny relative to traditional markets. From that starting point, he frames the projected growth as institutional migration onto blockchains, not speculative fever.
DeFi as the connective tissue
Kendrick named decentralized finance protocols as key beneficiaries of the expected surge. DeFi refers to lending, trading, and other financial services run by code on public blockchains rather than by intermediaries.
His argument rests on composability. That is the ability of different onchain applications to plug into each other like Lego bricks, so a tokenized bond could serve as loan collateral in one app and feed a yield product in another.
Kendrick expects more lending activity and more composability opportunities once regulatory barriers come down. His earlier reports suggested established DeFi protocols would capitalize on tokenized asset growth once US legislation such as the Clarity and GENIUS Acts provides regulatory clarity.
Background: a bank with skin in the game
Standard Chartered is not forecasting from the sidelines. The bank has built a presence in digital asset custody services and tokenized deposits.
Still, the forecast is internally consistent with the bank’s earlier numbers. The latest remarks narrow the focus of Kendrick’s broader tokenization thesis toward the non-stablecoin segment.
What this means
For investors, the most direct read-through is to DeFi infrastructure. If tokenized RWAs scale toward the approximately $2 trillion Standard Chartered has outlined, the protocols that let those assets be lent, borrowed, and combined would sit at the center of the activity.
The forecast also hints at a reshuffling of priorities. With the bank’s stablecoin milestone pushed to 2030, the near-term growth story it describes leans more heavily on tokenized traditional assets.
The risks are just as clear. Kendrick’s timeline depends on regulatory barriers easing, and his framing ties DeFi’s opportunity to clarity under the Clarity and GENIUS Acts. If that clarity arrives slowly, the two-to-three-year window could stretch, much as the bank’s stablecoin target already has.
The stablecoin revision is itself a useful reminder. Standard Chartered has shown it will move its own deadlines when conditions change, so the 50x figure is best read as a directional bet on institutional adoption rather than a fixed date on the calendar.
What to watch: the size of the tokenized RWA market against its mid-2026 baseline of approximately $35 to $40 billion, progress on US digital asset legislation, and whether DeFi lending volumes start reflecting real-world collateral.
