Crypto Market Shifts from Asset Existence to Utility as Blockchain Adoption Grows

The cryptocurrency market is shifting from 'asset existence' to 'asset utility,' according to HTX Research's latest report. This transition, which the research team calls the second half of programmable finance, marks a significant move towards using blockchain technology as new infrastructure for issuance, settlement, and asset management.

The report examines the growth of tokenized assets, excluding stablecoins, which has surpassed $34 billion since mid-2024. While this number remains small compared to global bond, equity, gold, and credit markets, it indicates that traditional financial assets can be effectively mapped onchain.

However, the report notes that RWA (Representative Wallet Assets) tokenization is more accurately positioned as 'proven feasible' rather than mainstream. Onchain issuance, holding, and settlement have been demonstrated, but large-scale composability, credit creation, and secondary liquidity have not.

The research team also highlights a paradox in onchain utilization, where the largest asset categories often show the lowest onchain usage. For example, tokenized bonds are among the largest categories, yet only around 5% of their supply is deployed in DeFi protocols.