Tokenization could open new opportunities for retail investors to access traditionally restricted asset classes, according to Johann Kerbrat, senior vice president and general manager of Robinhood Crypto, who called it “very important for financial inclusion.”

Speaking at the Consensus 2025 event in Toronto, Kerbrat said that some real-world assets, such as real estate and private equity, are available only to up to 10% of the US population. “You need to be an accredited investor to invest in private equity right now,” he said.

“How many people can afford a house or an apartment in New York?” he elaborated. “But you can get a piece of it with fractionalization, through tokenization. And so we think it makes it a lot easier to be exchanged, a lot more accessible for everybody.”

Robinhood’s Johann Kerbrat at Consensus 2025. Source: Cointelegraph

Robinhood has been one of a handful of investment firms or brokerages that have explored RWA tokenization in recent months. Others include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Apollo, and VanEck.

RWA tokenization is often touted as a means to enhance financial accessibility, with most tokenized funds currently concentrated on the private credit and US treasury markets. According to RWA.xyz on May 16, the total market capitalization of onchain RWA is $22.5 billion across just 101,457 asset holders. On average, each holder owns $221,867 in onchain assets.

Related: MultiBank, MAG, Mavryk ink world’s largest $3B RWA tokenization deal

Stablecoin evolution will create more ‘specialized’ tokens

Kerbrat also touched on stablecoins, which have emerged as a key crypto use case this cycle. “You will see 100 stablecoins,” he predicted.

Kerbrat expects a rise in stablecoins that are “more specialized in a specific market.” According to DefiLlama, dollar-pegged stablecoins dominate the stablecoin sector. The two largest, Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC), account for $211.8 billion or 87.1% of the $243.3 billion stablecoin market cap.

“If you’re trying to move funds from the US to Singapore, maybe you will use a specific stablecoin,” he said. “The shift is going to go from just stablecoin to platforms that are managing all these stablecoins.”

Tether’s USDT has seen its market share surge over the past few years. Source: DefiLlama

Fireblocks policy chief Dea Markova recently told Cointelegraph that there is a growing demand for non-dollar-pegged stablecoins. In April, the Italian finance minister warned that dollar-pegged stablecoins represent a greater risk than US President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Magazine: Ethereum is destroying the competition in the $16.1T TradFi tokenization race

The Filecoin Foundation and Lockheed Martin Space have successfully transmitted data in space using a version of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) on a satellite orbiting Earth, Marta Belcher, president of the Filecoin Foundation, told Cointelegraph. 

Filecoin and Lockheed Martin adapted the system for use in space and successfully tested it, Belcher said during the Consensus 2025 conference in Toronto.

The IPFS enhances privacy and security compared to traditional web protocols, such as HTTP, by identifying data based on its content rather than its location. This has additional benefits for data transmission in space, Belcher said.

“The architecture is well-suited to space because it reduces delays, compensates for data corruption caused by radiation, and enables cryptographic verification to ensure data has not been tampered with,” she said.

The foundation is a nonprofit governing the decentralized cloud storage protocol Filecoin (FIL), which uses the IPFS web protocol to store data. Lockheed Martin is one of the world’s largest aerospace companies.

Source: Filecoin Foundation

Decentralized storage benefits

“There’s a multi-second delay from the Moon and a multi-minute delay from Mars,” Belcher said.

“With IPFS, you look for a content ID and retrieve the data from wherever is closest — your own device, a nearby satellite, or a lunar station.”

Additionally, the IPFS uses a distributed architecture to store multiple copies of data across a global network, reducing reliance on centralized data centers.

These multiple copies of data improve reliability in environments where hardware is prone to degradation, helping to ensure the integrity of sensitive materials such as satellite images, according to Belcher.

Interest in decentralized archival storage is growing among media companies, and the Foundation is also exploring potential military applications of this technology, Belcher said.

“It could be really powerful for media in general to have that deep archive and also the ability to have your records everywhere all over the world when needed,” she said.

The FIL token is a utility token that can be used within the Filecoin ecosystem. It has a total market capitalization of approximately $1.8 billion as of May 16, according to Cointelegraph data.

Magazine: X Hall of Flame: Bitcoin will ‘start ripping’ as Trump’s polls improve — Felix Hartmann 

Solv Protocol has launched a yield-bearing Bitcoin token on the Avalanche blockchain, giving institutional investors more exposure to yield opportunities backed by real-world assets, or RWAs.

On May 16, the protocol unveiled SolvBTC.AVAX, a token that connects Bitcoin (BTC) to real-world assets like US Treasurys and private credit offered by BlackRock and Hamilton Lane. 

The new token was developed through a seven-way partnership involving Solv, Avalanche, Balancer, Elixir, Euler, Re7 Labs, and LFJ, the company said. 

Solv Protocol founder Ryan Chow said the token is a way to link Bitcoin to “real-world economic cycles” in uncorrelated assets such as US government bonds and private credit, as opposed to BTC’s typical boom-and-bust four-year cycle.

The token uses a multi-protocol strategy to generate yield involving Elixir’s deUSD stablecoin, Treasurys provided by BlackRock and Hamilton Lane via Elixir, and incorporated on the lending platform Euler to increase RWA exposure.

“The yield is received in BTC format,” a Solv Protocol spokesperson told Cointelegraph

Elixir deUSD is a synthetic dollar with nearly $220 million in market capitalization. Source: RWA.xyz

Solv is a Bitcoin-centric staking platform that offers yield strategies across various blockchains and decentralized finance applications. The protocol commands more than $2.3 billion in total value locked, according to industry data. 

Solv Protocol’s TVL. Source: DefiLlama

Related: Bitcoin supply crunch boosts confidence in $200K target for 2025 — Bitwise CIO

The race to offer Bitcoin yield intensifies

Demand for Bitcoin yield solutions has grown amid the recent wave of institutional adoption of digital assets.

Earlier this month, crypto exchange Coinbase launched the Bitcoin Yield Fund, which aims to offer annual returns of between 4% and 8% on BTC holdings. 

The yield will be earned through a cash-and-carry strategy, which involves purchasing BTC in the spot market and selling a corresponding futures contract, Coinbase said.

CoinShares analyst Satish Patel predicted the growing interest in Bitcoin yield in December, noting that more investors now see BTC “not only as a store of value but also as a means to generate yields.”

While there are many ways to generate Bitcoin yield, such as leveraging derivatives or yield farming, Michael Saylor’s Strategy introduced its own “BTC Yield” metric to measure the performance of its investment strategy.

Strategy’s BTC Yield, which measures how much additional Bitcoin it’s acquiring relative to its outstanding shares, is currently 15.5% year-to-date, according to the company. 

Magazine: Metric signals $250K Bitcoin is ‘best case,’ SOL, HYPE tipped for gains: Trade Secrets