Fidelity Executive: Institutions Have No Turning Back on the Path to On-Chain Tokenization Future

According to Cointelegraph, Matthew Horne, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Fidelity Investments, stated during a panel discussion at the Longitude conference in Singapore that there is "truly no turning back" as institutional forces have driven assets towards an on-chain future over the past 18 months. He pointed out that tokenization brings structural advantages to financial institutions and helps asset management companies reach new markets, with U.S. asset management companies particularly motivated to move assets on-chain.

Ka Yan Chan, Head of Digital Asset Development at UBS, mentioned that government bonds and stocks, as core assets for portfolio construction, could bring billions of dollars on-chain. She believes that what will truly drive the scale from hundreds of billions to trillions will be market infrastructure participants like the Federal Reserve or DTCC taking the lead in transforming the custody layer into a tokenized platform, upon which industry participants can build a distribution layer.

Data shows that demand for tokenized assets has increased by 41% in the past 30 days, with the number of holders surpassing 493,000. In December 2025, the SEC issued a "no-action" letter to a DTCC subsidiary, allowing it to provide new tokenization services for the securities market; in September, the SEC approved a temporary exemption allowing tokenized U.S. stocks to be traded on specific on-chain venues. Over the past 30 days, more than $1.2 billion has moved on-chain, with the total amount of stablecoins and tokenized assets exceeding $323 billion. Geoff Kendrick, Global Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, predicted in August that tokenized real-world assets could reach $4 trillion by the end of 2028.