Tokenization Faces Buyer Demand Gap, Not Tech Issue, Says GSR CEO

Overview of Tokenization

Tokenization has been touted as finance's next great plumbing upgrade, but GSR CEO Xin Song reveals that the issue lies not with the technology, but with the demand side. According to Song, the technical feasibility of tokenization is not the problem, but rather the scale of the opportunity.

Market Size and Demand

Estimates suggest that the total value of tokenized real-world assets is between $39 billion and $60 billion. However, the numbers around the sector help illustrate the mismatch between supply and buyer interest. Many tokenized real-world assets barely move, recording zero trades in a given week.

GSR's Investment Strategy

GSR is not just diagnosing the problem from the sidelines. The firm is investing over $100 million in products designed to expand onchain finance and tokenization. The centerpiece of this investment is Hare, an onchain vault business that focuses on yield products built around stablecoins and tokenized gold.

Other Tokenization Players

GSR has also been assembling pieces of a broader tokenization stack. The firm has invested in Libeara and acquired firms including Autonomous and Architech. These moves are aimed at strengthening GSR's end-to-end offering across advisory, issuance, and liquidity services.

Tokenized Equities and Fixed Income

Tokenized equities have seen spikes in onchain trading volume, reaching a market value of about $4.87 billion to $5.89 billion in September 2026. However, conditions for tokenized fixed income products have been weaker.

Implications for Investors

Song's comments land as a useful reality check on one of crypto's most heavily promoted narratives. Large headline figures for tokenized assets can obscure how little of that value actually trades. Investors should not assume that being onchain means being liquid, as the weekly trading data suggests otherwise for many assets.

Conclusion

GSR's $100 million push into Hare is one test of the thesis that pairing tokenized assets with yield is a workable path to demand. The signals worth watching are whether trading activity in tokenized real-world assets picks up, whether private credit estimates start to converge, and whether the momentum in tokenized equities spreads into fixed income products.