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It's honestly hard to summarize the biggest narratives of 2024 just because there are so many of them, but if I were to engage in this exercise, I'd say tokenization — and BlackRock's big foray into the cryptocurrency space — would be at the top of the list.

Tokenized Treasuries are currently worth about $4 billion, according to RWA.xyz, making up a small portion of the RWA pie. Currently, the total onchain RWA (excluding stablecoins) stands at $15.2 billion.

However, Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo believes that you could realistically cut out some of the coding effort done on private chains that no one uses, which could bring the total value down to around $5 billion.

Both VanEck and Bitwise believe the RWA space could grow to $50 billion — a number Domingo believes is within reach.

“If you look at the pace at which we're going to grow, the treasury space, that itself, should grow to several billion dollars next year, because stablecoins are at $200 billion now. So it should be $10 to $20 billion of Treasuries and then you start adding some new products that we'll be rolling out... the continued integrations with DeFi, etc. I think the industry aggregation... should reach $50 billion over the next 12 to 18 months, hopefully. “We maintain a 20% to 25% market share as a leader in the industry,” Domingo said.

As for the success this year, Domingo believes that tokenization has not reached the mainstream not only because of the entry of prominent figures into the field, but also because there is “utility from tokens.”

“We started with simple features like peer-to-peer portability, and thus faster portability that makes the asset more useful on-chain, like the use cases we've been working on - using BUIDL as collateral - etc. It's all based on the ability to move cards,” he explained. Financial efficiency (and) liquidity through some redemptions using stablecoins, etc.

Domingo clearly doesn't think coding's moment in the spotlight is an individual matter. He is a firm believer that we will continue to see the RWA space adapt and evolve throughout the next year.

For Domingo, what is important is the aforementioned integration with DeFi, which Securitize is exploring as its next project.

“This will make the industry grow 10x,” he told me. “That’s my personal view.” But it will be good for both RWA and DeFi, as they will be able to benefit from each other’s success.

When it comes to the challenges of next year, it will be two-fold for Securitize.

First, Domingo told me, half-jokingly, that he had to stop being a bottleneck (which, he added, was why he started Securities). Thrilled to bring Michael Sonnenshein late last year) and then it's all about talent acquisition.

Hiring in an emerging market is very "difficult" because of the amount of competition in the field, but it's not a bad problem to have, since the regulatory burden is no longer a major concern once we transition into this next administration, Domingo said.

Forget the year of the snake, this is the year of the symbol.

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