We are at the beginning of the tokenization of all assets: Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock

BlackRock’s boss is going all-in on tokenization of real-world assets as he plans to move away from traditional assets and focus on on-chain.

“I really believe we are just at the beginning of the tokenization of all assets, from real estate to stocks and bonds, across the board,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink noted in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

He said that the company has begun to focus on “moving away from traditional financial assets by ‘repotting’ them in a digital way.” This way, investors could stay within the digital ecosystem, he added.

Next wave of opportunity

Fink envisions putting some of the $4 trillion in crypto market investments into traditional assets, such as exchange-traded funds, by tokenizing them and making them more easily accessible.

“There is $4.1 trillion of money in digital wallets worldwide,” he said, before adding that much of that money is outside the United States.

“If we could tokenize an ETF, you know, digitize that ETF, we could have investors who are just starting to invest in markets, for example through cryptocurrencies. They invest in them, but now we could get them into the more traditional long-term retirement products.”

He added that this was the “next wave of opportunity” for BlackRock over the next decade.

What struck me most about Larry Fink’s interview this morning was when he said that the next wave of opportunity for BlackRock is “moving away from traditional financial assets” and making them digital.

“If we can tokenize an ETF, we can have investors who just… pic.twitter.com/2javTBpe49

—Eleanor Terrett (@EleanorTerrett) October 14, 2025

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BlackRock is no stranger to crypto or tokenization. It has the largest tokenized cash money market fund called BUIDL, which has $2.8 billion in assets under management. It also boasts the largest and fastest growing Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) in the world, which has now surpassed $100 billion in assets under management.

“It’s not about whether the market goes up or down, whether there’s a bubble in crypto or whether there’s a bubble in tech… It’s about being in the market throughout the cycle,” he told CNBC’s Jim Cramer.

RWA sector outlook

The real-world asset tokenization sector is at an all-time high of $33.8 billion in on-chain value, according to to RWA.xyz. That figure has increased by 115% since the beginning of this year, and about half of that consists of symbolic private credit.

Despite all the FUD, Ethereum remains the market leader and standard for asset tokenization. It has a 57% market share, which rises to 78% if Ethereum Virtual Machine and layer 2 networks such as ZKsync, Polygon and Arbitrum are included.

Many believe that BlackRock will continue to use Ethereum to bring its assets on-chain rather than reinvent the wheel.