Tokenized private credit has become the fastest-growing corner of the real-world-asset market, and the people building it have stopped pretending Treasuries are the main event. On-chain private credit outstanding grew about 180% over the year to roughly $3.2 billion in early 2026, per CoinDesk, while Maple Finance — one of the largest on-chain lenders, with more than $4 billion in assets — launched a yield-bearing credit product on Coinbase’s Base network in late January. Where tokenized money-market funds pay 4 to 5 percent, tokenized private credit pays 8 to 15. That gap is the whole story.
The higher number is not a free lunch. It is the price of risk moving on-chain.
What a Tokenized Fund Actually Is
Simply put: a tokenized fund is a pooled investment vehicle whose shares are recorded as tokens on a public blockchain rather than on a transfer agent’s private ledger. The fund is still a fund, with the same regulator and custodian behind it. What changes is that the share moves in seconds, runs around the clock, and can plug directly into other on-chain systems as collateral.
What sits inside the pool separates safe from spicy. At one end are tokenized money-market funds holding short-dated Treasuries and paying 4 to 5 percent: BlackRock’s BUIDL, Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, Hashnote’s USYC. At the other end is tokenized private credit: pools of loans to operating businesses – working-capital lines, receivables, emerging-market fintech debt. Not to mention paying 8 to 15 percent because a borrower might not pay it back.
The Money-Market End, Boring on Purpose
The tokenized-fund category that actually has scale is the dull one. Tokenized money-market and Treasury funds held around $12 to $13 billion combined as of early 2026, per a market analysis from MEXC, with BlackRock’s BUIDL alone at roughly 40 percent share and about $2.5 billion in assets. Franklin Templeton’s BENJI, near $828 million in the first quarter of 2026, is the only one wrapping a US-registered 1940-Act mutual fund. So its compliance rules run at the chain level, and an ineligible transfer simply fails to execute.
These products are not chasing retail attention. They are plumbing for institutions: BUIDL is accepted as collateral on Binance and OKX and backs other on-chain products, the CFTC has recognized tokenized money-market funds as eligible margin collateral, and banks from Goldman Sachs to DBS have run treasury pilots on them. The pitch is mundane and powerful: idle cash that earns and settles without leaving the chain.
The Private-Credit End, Where the Yield and the Risk Live
Private credit is where tokenization stops parking money and starts deploying it. Maple Finance’s chief executive, Sidney Powell, argued in January 2026 that the real opportunity was never Treasury bills or funds but the opaque, illiquid private-credit market, the assets that gain the most from transparent, around-the-clock pricing. Centrifuge has originated more than $1.1 billion in active loans at 8 to 12 percent, per its own March 2026 figures, and has even tokenized an S&P 500 index product with S&P Dow Jones Indices.
One number rarely gets pinned down cleanly: the headline size of on-chain private credit depends entirely on whether you count Figure Technologies. Include Figure’s on-chain home-equity lending and RWA.xyz-style trackers put the category near $18 billion; exclude it, counting only the active DeFi credit protocols such as Maple, Centrifuge, and Goldfinch, and you are closer to $3 billion. Same words, a six-fold difference. Always check which one a headline means.
What the Wrapper Doesn't Fix
A token cannot underwrite a loan. Tokenized private credit carries the same default risk as the loans inside it; pools on the major protocols run baseline default rates in the 1 to 3 percent range, roughly in line with traditional mid-market lending, per industry data compiled in 2026. Powell himself expects on-chain defaults to arrive and test the system. The 8-to-15-percent yield is compensation for illiquidity and credit risk, not a blockchain bonus.
Liquidity is the subtler illusion. Secondary trading exists: Centrifuge and Figure list loan tokens on regulated alternative trading systems, but it is thin, and redemptions can gate when a pool is stressed. None of it escapes securities law either: these tokens are issued under Regulation D, Regulation S, or the 1940 Act, with eligibility limited to qualified or accredited investors. The wrapper is new; the rulebook is not.
Why It Matters
Tokenized funds are the rung where on-chain finance grows up. The Treasury token in this series’ first installment asked one question: do you trust the US government to pay? A tokenized money-market fund asks the same thing with a fee attached. Tokenized private credit asks something harder: do you trust the underwriter, the borrower, and the legal wrapper connecting an on-chain token to an off-chain loan?
That is the direction this whole series is heading. Each step up the yield curve is a step further from assets a ledger can fully describe and toward assets that lean on enforcement and real-world trust. Like a building, a carbon credit, a restored watershed. Private credit is the first place tokenization touches the working economy instead of just the money supply.
The tokenized T-bill let you skip the custody chain. Tokenized private credit asks you to price a stranger’s loan book at eight on a Sunday morning. The technology makes both trade the same way; whether that is progress depends on what you are willing to take on faith, and the assets still ahead in this series will test that faith a great deal harder.
Disclosure: The author holds no position in the assets or companies named and has no relationship with them. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
