By Toby Nicole
For most of American history, the best investments have been behind a velvet rope: private credit, commercial real estate, and early-stage companies. If you wanted in, you needed to be what the SEC calls an accredited investor. For most people, that means a net worth over $1 million not counting your home, or income over $200,000 a year ($300,000 with a spouse) for two years running. Most of the families I talk to will never clear that bar. I spent 15 years in trucking and transportation, and I am a licensed insurance adjuster. Nobody in those rooms was getting invited into a private credit deal. Tokenization is starting to change who gets through the door and that is the good news. The bad news is that the people who need it most are the least prepared to use it.
The rope is getting lower
Look at two tokenized money market funds that both hold short term U.S. government debt. BlackRock's BUIDL fund requires a $5 million minimum and is limited to qualified purchasers. Franklin Templeton's OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, the one behind the BENJI token, lets most accounts start with $20 through its app. Same asset class, same basic technology, but two very different doors.
That gap is the whole argument for tokenization as a wealth building tool. When ownership is recorded on a blockchain, an asset can be split into small pieces and settled without the layers of paperwork that used to make small investors not worth the trouble. The market is also growing fast. RWA.xyz tracks nearly $39 billion in tokenized real world assets on public blockchains, up from around $6 billion at the start of 2025. Now put that next to the biggest money event of our lifetime. Cerulli Associates projects $124 trillion will change hands in the U.S. through 2048. More than half of that, about $62 trillion, is expected to come from high net worth households that make up only 2% of all households. That meanslargebig share of the largest wealth transfer in histostays withinide families that already have money. Many other families have no inheritance coming at all, so they will have to start from zero with whatever they can save. Low minimums and fractional ownership let them begin investing with $20 or $50 instead of waiting until they have thousands.
Access without understanding is a trap
Here is where I get worried.
The 2026 TIAA Institute and GFLEC Personal Finance Index found that U.S. adults answered only 47% of basic personal finance questions correctly. That is the lowest score in the ten years they have run the survey. On questions about understanding risk, the number dropped to 36%. Gen Z, the generation that will live with tokenized markets the longest, averaged 38%. Meanwhile, the scammers are already running amok. The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report logged more than $11.3 billion in cryptocurrency-related losses. That was over half of all internet crime losses reported to the Bureau last year and crypto investment fraud alone accounted for about $7.2 billion.
Now, put those numbers side by side. People who struggle with basic risk questions are being handed 24/7 markets with a buy button on their phone and some of the voices explaining those markets to them are the same people trying to rob them. I see it all the time in social media comments.
Scams are only part of the problem, because even well-built products can confuse people. In his July piece for The Intersection, “Tokenized Stocks Are Up 422%. Most of Them Aren't Stocks,” Gabor Gurbacs explained that much of the recent growth in tokenized stocks comes from synthetic tokens. These follow a company's price without giving the holder ownership in the company itself. An experienced investor might catch that difference, but a 24-year-old starting a portfolio with $50 probably will not.
Education has to ship with the product
I do not think the answer is to slow tokenization down. Keeping the rope high protects nobody because it just keeps the same families on the outside. The answer is to treat education as part of the infrastructure. The industry spends a lot of time on custody, settlement and regulation. It spends very little on whether a first time investor knows what they actually own.
Every tokenized product marketed to everyday people should explain in plain language whether the holder owns the asset or only tracks its price. Platforms that open low-minimum doors should also teach what a money market fund is, what redemption means, and how to spot a fake support account in your DMs and comments. Community educators, churches, credit unions and creators who already have the trust of these families need to be part of the conversation instead of an afterthought. The message to families has to be simple. Ownership is the goal and understanding comes before buying. If someone is rushing you, walk away.
What generational wealth actually requires
Generational wealth is not a lottery ticket. It is an asset someone understood well enough to hold through the hard years and pass down with instructions. Tokenization can put real assets within reach of families who were never invited to own them. I believe that and I have built my work around it. Still, opening a door to people who cannot see the risk on the other side does them no favors.
In his 2026 letter to investors, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote that most wealth has flowed to people who already own assets and that tokenization could open the door to more investors. A lot of people read that as an invitation, but in my opinion it was not one. It was a business case from a firm with nearly $150 billion tied to digital assets and BlackRock's own tokenized Treasury fund still requires $5 million to get in. The real invitation for everyday families has to come through education. The doors are opening. Our job is to make sure people walk through them with their eyes open.
Toby Nicole is a financial educator, author, and founder of I Am My Own Asset®. She teaches everyday families about crypto, tokenization and generational wealth. Her free ebooks, The Million Dollar Mistake and Step Out On Faith, are available at tobynicole.com. Learn more at iammyownasset.com.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not financial advice.
