Pokémon trading cards could be the next real-world asset to move onchain at scale, potentially bringing a $21.4 billion market to the blockchain.
“Pokémon and other [trading card games] are about to have their ‘Polymarket moment,’” said Bitwise research analyst Danny Nelson on Thursday.
“I expect the Pokémon boom will be sticky — one of those moments where an ‘only in crypto’ innovation breaks into the mainstream. Kinda like what Polymarket did for prediction markets.”
RWA crypto tokenization has boomed into a $28.2 billion market in 2025, but it is almost entirely catered to TradFi assets like stocks, treasuries, commodities, private credit and real estate.
While this offers improved benefits such as 24/7 trading and potential cost savings, it doesn’t transform them as “good enough digital rails already exist,” Nelson said.
However, Pokémon card trading could benefit far more from the blockchain, Nelson said, noting that sellers still have to physically ship their Charizard, Pikachu and Gardevoirs to buyers.
Pokémon ETFs in future? Nelson said it’s possible
He noted that the inefficient solution still saw market leader Whatnot facilitate $3 billion in sales last year. “This market remains largely informal. You don’t see Pokémon ETFs or investment funds, and you probably won’t for a while. But maybe not as long as you’d think.”
Pokémon cards and other trading card games like Magic: The Gathering have been around for about three decades, long before non-fungible tokens were ever a concept.
A new market leader paving the way
Nelson’s comments come as Collector Crypt recently emerged as a tokenization platform for selling Pokémon cards on Solana, enabling fast trades and profitable exits.
The token backing Collector Crypt, CARDS, has already risen 10-fold to a fully diluted volume of $450 million since launching last Saturday, Nelson pointed out.
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“Traders are rushing to price in revenue-generating potential,” Nelson said, noting that it is signaling an annualized revenue of $38 million. He added that much of the “early hype” rests on those yields potentially flowing back to token buybacks.
The Pokémon card trading has also driven demand for Collector Crypt’s Gacha Machine project, which has taken in $16.6 million in revenue over the last week.
NFTs clock most trading volume since January
Meanwhile, NFT trading volumes rose 9% month-on-month to $578 million in August, their largest tally since January, crypto analytics platform DappRadar said on Thursday.
Despite the 9% rise, the sale count fell 4%, showing that “fewer assets traded hands, collectors are paying more per sale,” DappRadar said.
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