Pokémon buying and selling playing cards could possibly be the following real-world asset to maneuver onchain at scale, doubtlessly bringing a $21.4 billion market to the blockchain.
“Pokémon and different [trading card games] are about to have their ‘Polymarket second,’” mentioned Bitwise analysis analyst Danny Nelson on Thursday.
“I anticipate the Pokémon increase might be sticky — a kind of moments the place an ‘solely in crypto’ innovation breaks into the mainstream. Kinda like what Polymarket did for prediction markets.”
RWA crypto tokenization has boomed right into a $28.2 billion market in 2025, however it’s nearly completely catered to TradFi belongings like shares, treasuries, commodities, non-public credit score and actual property.
Whereas this gives improved advantages equivalent to 24/7 buying and selling and potential value financial savings, it doesn’t remodel them as “ok digital rails exist already,” Nelson mentioned.
Nonetheless, Pokémon card buying and selling may gain advantage way more from the blockchain, Nelson mentioned, noting that sellers nonetheless must bodily ship their Charizard, Pikachu and Gardevoirs to consumers.
Pokémon ETFs in future? Nelson mentioned it’s attainable
He famous that the inefficient resolution nonetheless noticed market chief Whatnot facilitate $3 billion in gross sales final 12 months. “This market stays largely casual. You don’t see Pokémon ETFs or funding funds, and also you in all probability gained’t for some time. However possibly not so long as you’d suppose.”
Pokémon playing cards and different buying and selling card video games like Magic: The Gathering have been round for about three a long time, lengthy earlier than non-fungible tokens had been ever an idea.
A brand new market chief paving the best way
Nelson’s feedback come as Collector Crypt just lately emerged as a tokenization platform for promoting Pokémon playing cards on Solana, enabling quick trades and worthwhile exits.
The token backing Collector Crypt, CARDS, has already risen 10-fold to a completely diluted quantity of $450 million since launching final Saturday, Nelson identified.
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“Merchants are dashing to cost in revenue-generating potential,” Nelson mentioned, noting that it’s signaling an annualized income of $38 million. He added that a lot of the “early hype” rests on these yields doubtlessly flowing again to token buybacks.
The Pokémon card buying and selling has additionally pushed demand for Collector Crypt’s Gacha Machine undertaking, which has taken in $16.6 million in income over the past week.
NFTs clock most buying and selling quantity since January
In the meantime, NFT buying and selling volumes rose 9% month-on-month to $578 million in August, their largest tally since January, crypto analytics platform DappRadar mentioned on Thursday.
Regardless of the 9% rise, the sale depend fell 4%, exhibiting that “fewer belongings traded palms, collectors are paying extra per sale,” DappRadar mentioned.
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