Digital Money, Explained: Stablecoins, CBDCs & Tokenized Assets (2026)

Money and assets are going on-chain in four lanes at once — private stablecoins, state CBDCs, tokenized Treasuries, and rebuilt settlement rails.…

Aliteq
Sam Okafor · Web3 & Chains Editor

The short version

Four lanes, four builders. Stablecoins (private companies), CBDCs (central banks), tokenized real-world assets (asset managers), and on-chain settlement (banks + networks) are all digitising money…

The short version

Stablecoins are the biggest today — a ~$300B market of private dollar-tokens, now with a US legal framework (the GENIUS Act).

The short version

**Tokenized Treasuries are the fastest-growing *asset* story** — ~$15B of US government debt now sits on-chain via funds from BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Ondo.

The short version

CBDCs are the state's version — led by China's e-CNY — and the settlement layer is being rebuilt by both China's mBridge and, separately, SWIFT's own blockchain ledger.

The short version

The honest read: the infrastructure is real and growing, but the legal plumbing (who owns what, what happens when it breaks) is the actual frontier — not the technology.

Keep your skeptic on

This space is full of confident predictions — 'the dollar is finished,' 'everything will be tokenized,' 'CBDCs are mass surveillance / the future of freedom.' Treat all of them as marketing until…

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Digital Money, Explained: Stablecoins, CBDCs & Tokenized Assets (2026)

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