Binance’s CZ admits underestimating growth of real-world assets

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, has a confession: he didn’t see this coming. In an interview with Wu Blockchain, CZ acknowledged that the growth of real-world asset tokenization and stablecoins significantly exceeded his expectations, even as recently as early 2025. The numbers that surprised CZ The tokenized RWA market has swelled to roughly $29 to $33 billion by mid-2026. Tokenized US Treasuries alone now account for more than $13 billion of that total. Stablecoins told a similar story. The market has eclipsed $320 billion, a figure CZ specifically cited as one he hadn’t anticipated. CZ described his surprise at RWAs becoming “quite big,” noting that he hadn’t expected this scale of growth when looking at the landscape around early 2025. From mea culpa to evangelist During events in Hong Kong in August 2026, CZ went beyond simply acknowledging the trend and actively championed it, calling the tokenization of securities a potential leading direction for Web3. CZ encouraged the idea of “tokenizing everything” to enhance global access to financial products. BNB Chain recorded approximately 776,000 RWA holders as of August 19, 2026. That figure represents a 370% increase over...