The Fastest Growing Market in Tech Isn't AI – Tomasz Tunguz

Tokenized real-world assets are identified as the fastest-growing market in tech, compounding at 53% monthly over 20 months (a 5,133× increase) for RWA trades and 36% monthly (483×) for RWA spot volume, outpacing Anthropic’s 25% monthly revenue growth (65×). Real-world assets (RWA) means enabling stocks and commodities like oil and copper to trade on blockchains, providing nearly all public price discovery when traditional commodity exchanges are closed. On-chain trade records and public revenue estimates show tokenized markets already delivering continuous price signals and broader international access to major companies.

Practically, RWA markets use instruments such as stock perpetuals to enable pre-IPO price discovery for firms including Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX and Cerebras, sometimes with large open interest and cumulative volumes. Stablecoins have become substantial buyers of U.S. government debt and act as the settlement layer for many tokenized transactions. Major financial institutions - from J.P. Morgan and BlackRock to Citi, Goldman, Franklin Templeton, Robinhood and Stripe - are entering RWA, and Bloomberg has launched a stablecoin/RWA dashboard powered by Allium, framing this trend as a rapid on-chain transformation of finance.