Summary
You’re reading Crypto for Advisors, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter that unpacks digital assets for financial advisors. Subscribe here to get it every Thursday.
Happy Thursday, advisors!
In today’s newsletter, Jason Barraza explores why the conversation at TokenizeThis 2026 shifted from “if” to “how” as asset managers prioritize real-world utility over hype. He also highlights the remaining infrastructure gaps that must be solved to unlock the next phase of institutional adoption.
Then, in “Ask an Expert,” Joshua de Vos from CoinDesk Research answers questions about tokenized investment products and current market trends.
Happy reading.
Tokenization grew up in 2026, now it has to get to work
Key takeaways from TokenizeThis 2026, where the debate shifted from whether real-world assets belong on-chain to whether anyone is actually using them.
Bitcoin sat around $60,000 for most of the TokenizeThis 2026 conference, and almost nobody on stage seemed to care. The crypto and tokenization narratives have diverged. Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) have pushed past $30 billion, roughly six times where they sat at the start of 2025. During their keynote, RedStone’s founders cited an EY and Coinbase Institutional survey which found 64% of asset managers now want to tokenize, up from 40% a year earlier. As the keynote put it, the argument about demand for tokenization is over.
