Tokenization is moving from pilot to practice. The World Economic Forum predicts that the private equity and venture capital market could grow to around $700 billion, which will be tokenized. Its potential scale will still reshape global finance.
APAC is already moving forward. Hong Kong’s spot ETF raised $400 million on its first day. Japan is preparing an SBI-backed ETF with Franklin Templeton. Singapore has set up a tokenization framework. These ETF milestones are important individually and as stepping stones to broader tokenization.
Promotion of ETFs in Japan: Individuals first, institutional investments later
In an exclusive interview with BeInCrypto, Max Gokman, deputy chief investment officer at Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions (FTIS), explained why retail flows, proxy bets, and sovereign implementation could drive the next phase.
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His comments highlight both opportunities and risks. While ETFs represent an initial entry point, the bigger story is how tokenization can extend beyond asset classes and reset market structures. However, as history has shown, markets rarely move in a straight line.
Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) updated its fund guidelines in 2025, making room for new ETFs with partners such as SBI Holdings. Gokman believes retail will provide the initial liquidity. He argues that once the secondary market matures, financial institutions will follow suit.
He sees retail as a catalyst, but history suggests that without strong demand from pensions and endowments, early capital flows could disappear. The Japanese ETF story shows how short-term retail demand can lay the foundation for a tokenized market that financial institutions may eventually adopt.
Goffman emphasized that financial institutions have little interest in fractional LP funds. Instead, they want a means to manage volatility and enhance liquidity, the conditions necessary for large-scale adoption.
“It starts at the retail level…Retail may need more liquidity, but once retail is big enough and the secondary market really starts to flourish, it provides liquidity to financial institutions as well.”
Proxy bets and $2.7 billion Solana supply
Before ETFs, investors chased agents. MetaPlanet revealed that it has accumulated over 15,000 BTC. Remix Point also attracted a lot of speculation. Hong Kong regulators have warned about the leverage and counterparty exposure of spot ETFs when they are launched.
Goffman noted that Solana already has $2.7 billion in commitments in the lending market. This squeezes supply and drives up prices, demonstrating appetite but increasing systemic risk. These proxy bets demonstrate growing demand and explain why regulated tokenized vehicles are essential for stability.
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“Proxy products can be leveraged and carry higher counterparty risk. For example, many of the Solana bonds are buying up even more supply, but around $2.7 billion has already been committed. As more demand meets limited supply, prices rise. For ETFs, most traditional crypto ETFs are 1:1, meaning that buying shares means holding the underlying assets on-chain, similar to gold ETFs.
APAC Tokenization Edge
APAC markets are the first to move, but they are also moving deeper. At Token2049 in Singapore, Franklin Templeton executives met with family office and OCIO clients. They wanted a structured strategy rather than simple exposure.
Singapore’s MAS has expanded Project Guardian to complete a framework for tokenized funds targeting retail access by 2027. The WEF report estimates that the PE/VC market could reach up to $7 trillion by 2030, of which up to 10% (approximately $0.7 trillion) could be tokenized.
While ETF progress shows ambition, APAC’s deeper institutional involvement suggests that tokenization is a larger transformation underway. In contrast, Europe focuses on compliance. The United States remains mired in uncertainty.
Gokman noted that while the US remains Franklin Templeton’s overall largest revenue driver, clients in the Asia-Pacific region are becoming more mature in digital assets. This split shows how global strategy must balance U.S. scale with Asian innovation.
“Within APAC, we’re seeing a lot more sophistication among our family office and OCIO clients in particular compared to Western regions. They’re not just saying, ‘I want exposure,’ they’re asking us to structure it a certain way or walk them through layer two research. APAC is definitely a key driver for us.”
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Geopolitics and de-dollarization
BIS has documented that the dollar’s dominance is slowly declining. Goffman argued that Trump-era policies made the dollar less attractive and accelerated demand for digital assets.
He said the context was geopolitical. Demand for the dollar weakens as the US clashes even with its allies. For cross-border payments, avoiding SWIFT makes blockchain a clear alternative. This dynamic strengthens digital assets as neutral rails for global transactions. De-dollarization could serve as a geopolitical push, making tokenized rails more urgent than adopting ETFs alone.
“The Trump administration has actually been very helpful in terms of increasing the demand for digital assets as the dollar has become less attractive. Sovereign government bonds are being de-dollarized. As large companies get into DeFi and start buying at scale, that asset class should become more centralized and less volatile. An asset class with 30% annualized volatility is much easier to consolidate than one with 70% annualized volatility.”
tokens never sleep
Unlike traditional assets that shut down on weekends, tokenized assets operate 24/7. Goffman expressed this in one sentence. “Money never sleeps, but tokens never sleep.”
For investors, this means that tokenization is more than just expanding the product menu. It will reset the financial tempo. Portfolios need to adapt to a world where markets are never switched off.
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In fact, CoinGecko found that tokenized government debt has exceeded $5.5 billion and stablecoins have reached $224.9 billion. While ETFs have the potential to bring crypto exposure to more investors, tokenization has the potential to redefine how assets are traded, settled, and stored value.
In the first wave of tokenization, it is unlikely that all assets will be covered at once. Historically, markets start with instruments that are already liquid and institutionally trusted. That means money market funds, government bonds, and index-tracking ETFs are likely early candidates.
Once trust is built, tokenization could expand to private credit, real estate, and even cultural assets. This is an area that Goffman believes blockchain is uniquely enabling.
“We believe the future of all assets is tokenized. Traditional markets have legacy operational risks. To prepare for that, we are actively creating our own on-chain stack, turnkey portfolio that blends digital, public, and private asset classes, and even exploring categories like cultural assets that can only exist through tokenization.”
innovation and partnership
Beyond ETFs, Franklin Templeton is testing new vehicles. Gokman hinted that the company is also considering other strategic alliances to expand its tokenization use cases, although details regarding the partnership with Binance are still limited.
The takeaway for investors is that asset managers are expanding their experiments to scale, even though many strategies remain secret. The partnership is not just about market share, but how incumbents are preparing for tokenized infrastructure to go mainstream.
