Tokenized Asset Usage May Be Higher Than Thought, Says Katana CEO

Katana CEO Matthew Fisher suggests that tokenized asset usage could be closer to 20%, far exceeding some widely cited estimates. According to Fisher, reported utilization rates for tokenized assets this year have ranged from less than 1% to 7%, 11.7%, and 20%. The discrepancy in numbers is due to different standards used by each dataset.

Fisher attributes the low current utilization to the inclusion of assets such as private credit that were not actively traded initially. Some tokenized assets are being used as collateral at exchanges or financial institutions without being deposited into smart contracts, leaving them absent from conventional DeFi statistics.

BlackRock's BUIDL is being used as derivatives margin, while Franklin Templeton's BENJI and tokenized stocks are also being used as trading collateral. Factoring in these use cases, Fisher estimates that utilization for tokenized assets created for actual use could be around 20%.