Overview
- The IMF’s October Global Financial Stability Report says tokenized real‑world assets remain small but could magnify shocks as they connect to traditional finance.
- Tokenized RWAs totaled about $65 billion, with tokenized repo trading reported at roughly $300 billion to $350 billion a day, making repo activity the largest use so far.
- The Fund found tokenized equities are thinner and more volatile than their conventional counterparts, with about 1.5 times realized volatility and most trading occurring outside normal market hours.
- The report identifies four gaps that must be fixed to limit spillovers: unclear legal ownership, missing regulatory rules, poor interoperability across platforms, and a lack of widely accepted settlement assets.
- If those gaps are not closed, the IMF warns faster settlement and fragmented liquidity could remove traditional safety buffers and speed liquidity withdrawals, fire sales and cross‑market contagion.