Wall Street Has $7B in Tokenized Funds — But Less Than 1% Is Actually Being Used in DeFi. Here's Why That Gap Matters

WHY IT MATTERS

Imagine a big bank puts its financial products into a digital format that lives on a blockchain — that's tokenization. It's like converting a paper stock certificate into a digital token. Now, DeFi (decentralized finance) is like an open marketplace where anyone can lend, borrow, or trade these digital tokens without needing a bank as a middleman. The surprising finding here is that while Wall Street has put $7 billion worth of assets into this digital format, almost none of it is actually being used in that open marketplace. It's as if a company built electric cars but only drove them on private tracks instead of public roads. This matters because the real power of blockchain comes from connecting these assets to a global, open financial system — and right now, that connection barely exists. For crypto to reach its full potential, these two worlds need to start talking to each other.