ARK Invest projects massive crypto growth by 2030 driven by Bitcoin and RWAs

In ARK’s “Big Ideas 2026” report, the firm said a $28 trillion total would imply crypto growing at about a 61% compound annual growth rate through 2030, while Bitcoin’s share could place BTC in a roughly $950,000 to $1 million price range if about 20.5 million coins have been mined by then.

A central pillar of the forecast is tokenization. ARK estimated tokenized real-world assets could rise to about $11 trillion by 2030. That compares with current onchain tokenized asset value tracked by RWA.xyz, which showed $22.25 billion in “Distributed Asset Value” at the time of the data snapshot.

ARK also laid out a parallel growth track for smart-contract platforms that would host much of the onchain activity tied to tokenization and DeFi. The firm projected smart-contract platforms could grow at about a 54% CAGR to $6 trillion by 2030, and said they currently generate about $192 billion in annualized revenue with an average take rate of roughly 0.75%.

In practical terms for smart-contract ecosystems, ARK’s framing puts networks such as Ethereum and Solana in the line of fire for growth that comes from more financial activity settling onchain. The report-linked coverage highlighted that higher onchain usage, fee generation, and tokenized-asset issuance are expected to accrue primarily to the chains and applications handling trading, lending, payments rails and settlement, rather than remaining a purely speculative market-cap story.

The report’s broader thesis ties the 2030 market-size estimate to a mix of institutional adoption and product expansion, including wider use of ETFs, corporate balance-sheet activity in Bitcoin, and increasing tokenization of traditional assets alongside stablecoins and DeFi applications.