Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick forecasts 50x growth in non-stablecoin onchain assets

The bank's digital assets research head expects tokenized real-world assets to drive the surge over the next two to three years Standard Chartered thinks the onchain economy is about to get a lot bigger, and not just in stablecoins. Geoff Kendrick, the bank’s global head of digital assets research, forecast that non-stablecoin assets onchain will grow 50-fold over the next two to three years. He made the call at the SALT Conference on November 3, 2026, pointing to the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) as the main engine. What Kendrick actually projected The forecast targets a specific slice of the market. It covers tokenized assets that are not stablecoins: think bonds, funds, and other traditional instruments recreated as tokens on a blockchain. By mid-2026, the market for non-stablecoin RWAs was valued at approximately $35 to $40 billion. Stablecoins, by comparison, hovered around $300 to $320 billion. Apply Kendrick’s 50x multiple to that $35 to $40 billion base, and the arithmetic lands between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion. That lines up with Standard Chartered’s prior estimate of approximately $2 trillion in tokenized RWAs by the end of 2028. In other words, the new c...