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UAE Eyes $600 Trillion Tokenisation Opportunity as Real-World Assets Move On-Chain
18 Jun 2026
The UAE is making a deliberate play to become a regulated home for tokenised finance, targeting a slice of the more than $600 trillion in global real-world assets that have yet to move on-chain, with real estate, equities, bonds and gold leading the charge.
Tokenisation, the process of converting ownership of physical or financial assets into digital tokens on a blockchain, is increasingly being framed not as a crypto-native experiment but as the next phase of mainstream financial infrastructure. The contrast in scale makes the opportunity clear: the entire global crypto market sits at roughly $3 trillion, while the pool of traditional investable assets, equities, bonds, real estate and commodities, dwarfs it many times over.
Of that broader pool, real estate alone represents an estimated $300 trillion globally, with stocks and bonds adding a further $200 trillion and gold contributing around $31 trillion. Put together, these categories form the bulk of the $600 trillion-plus opportunity that tokenisation advocates say remains almost entirely untapped.
A Market Still in Its Infancy
Despite the scale of the addressable market, less than 0.01 percent of eligible assets have actually been tokenised to date. Consulting firm McKinsey has projected that more than $2 trillion in assets could move on-chain by 2030, a figure that, while modest relative to the total opportunity, would still represent a significant structural shift in how capital markets operate.
For the UAE specifically, tokenisation is being positioned as a way to widen access to investing beyond the country's existing base of roughly 2.4 million public equity investors, primarily through fractional ownership models that lower minimum investment thresholds and open markets to a broader pool of participants.
Tajinder Virk, co-founder and chief executive of Blockmaze, framed the shift in structural terms, noting that the next wave of financial adoption will be defined by how much of the existing financial world can be brought on-chain in a trusted, compliant and accessible way. Virk's broader view is that tokenisation has moved past the stage of being a speculative concept and is now functioning as a genuine structural change within global finance.
Why the UAE Is Positioning Itself as a Hub
Regulatory clarity is emerging as the key differentiator between jurisdictions chasing this opportunity, and the UAE has been actively building frameworks aimed at supporting tokenised real estate, gold and private credit. That regulatory groundwork is being paired with parallel efforts to develop stablecoin-based payment rails, which proponents argue could enable faster settlement and improve capital efficiency for cross-border transactions, a particularly relevant advantage for a market positioning itself as a global financial crossroads.
Beyond regulation, the operational case for tokenisation rests on a few recurring themes: faster settlement cycles, deeper liquidity, and the possibility of around-the-clock trading that isn't bound by the operating hours of traditional exchanges. Fractionalisation is the piece most likely to affect retail participation directly, since it reduces the capital required to gain exposure to historically illiquid or high-ticket asset classes like real estate or gold.
Legal Recognition as the Real Bottleneck
Even with growing technical capability, industry executives are cautioning that infrastructure alone won't be enough to unlock the full opportunity. Puneet Mangla, chief operating officer at Blockmaze, made the point that technical validation of a tokenised asset isn't sufficient on its own, without legal recognition behind it, tokenisation risks remaining a back-office efficiency tool rather than a true asset class in its own right.
That distinction is likely to shape which jurisdictions actually capture meaningful volume as tokenisation scales. Markets that can pair blockchain infrastructure with clear legal status for tokenised ownership, enforceable in courts, recognised by regulators, and bankable by institutions, are best placed to attract the capital that will define this market over the next decade.
The Bigger Picture
With regulatory frameworks taking shape, stablecoin payment rails in development, and a domestic investor base eager for broader access, the UAE appears to be assembling the pieces needed to compete for a leading position in tokenised finance. Whether it can convert that groundwork into a meaningful share of the $600 trillion opportunity will depend on how quickly legal recognition catches up with technical capability and how the rest of the world responds in the meantime.
Sources
- Khaleej Times Staff, "UAE eyes $600 trillion tokenisation opportunity as real-world assets move on-chain," Khaleej Times, June 11, 2026. https://www.khaleejtimes.com
