He explained that most RWA projects focus on traditional financial markets—treasury bonds, real estate, gold, and stocks. Tokenization gives these markets some advantages but doesn’t fundamentally change them.

With Pokemon cards, however, the story is different. The multi-billion-dollar market already exists, yet it operates almost entirely offline.

“Sellers are literally mailing their Charizards, Pikachus, and Gardevoirs to buyers—sometimes with expert grading, but often without. It’s inefficient, but it works. On Whatnot alone—a social auction app that’s just one segment of the market—$3 billion worth of goods were sold last year, mostly Pokemon,” Wilson noted.

Where did the hype start?

Wilson pointed to a recently launched project called Collector Crypt on Solana. It offers digital “packs” of NFTs that can be redeemed for original physical cards.

The platform also launched its own token, CARDS, whose market cap skyrocketed from $23 million to $83 million within days. FDV hit $386 million.

“CARDS grew 10x in under a week after release. Traders are rushing to price in its revenue potential. Current data shows the project trending toward $38 million in annual revenue,” Wilson added.

CoinGecko experts, citing Rugcheck.xyz, warned that Collector Crypt’s creators can change token supply at will and even disable sales. Nevertheless, the token price keeps climbing.

The Collector Crypt team announced it will soon reveal how the asset will be integrated into the platform’s products and services. Developers also stated that 100% of presale proceeds will be used to purchase physical Pokemon cards for the ecosystem. Wilson stressed this as a key driver of the hype.

The platform’s most popular product so far has been its digital gacha machine, reminiscent of video-game loot boxes. Users receive a random NFT, which can be linked to a “legendary” Pokemon card.

Screenshot Sept. 5, 2025, 16:46:14 | Digital gacha machine
Screenshot Sept. 5, 2025, 16:46:14 | Digital gacha machine. Source: Collector Crypt

According to the team, vending machines have already generated $70 million in revenue. More than 18,000 tokenized Pokemon cards are listed on the Collector Crypt site.

The Future of “Tokenized Pokemon”

By the end of August, trading volumes for these assets on the four main marketplaces surpassed $124 million, a fourfold increase since January.

“I expect the Pokemon boom to be sustainable—this is one of those moments when an innovation ‘born in crypto’ breaks into the mainstream. Similar to how Polymarket did it for prediction markets. It’s creating global demand for a service people never seriously considered before,” Wilson concluded.

The new trend has surprised many.

“The dual nature of crypto: I woke up planning to research tokenized Galaxy shares, and ended up finding out tokenized Pokemon cards are far more popular right now,” wrote a developer under the nickname Chirzhuu.