Tokenizing real-world assets has stopped being a speculative science project. Bryan Choe, Head of Research at RWA.xyz, says the industry has entered “a new phase” where the core question is no longer whether assets can be tokenized, but whether tokenization can produce functioning markets.
His warning is blunt. Issuing a token “is pretty straightforward.” Building liquidity, distribution, and user trust is not. And that gap explains why many tokenized products have advanced faster as infrastructure-adjacent tools than as consumer-style markets.
Infrastructure beats hype
Choe pushes back on a common story. People treat tokenization as if it were mainly blocked by missing technology. He calls that a misconception.
“Every market needs infrastructure and participant buy-in to develop, and tokenization is no exception,” Choe said.
In his account, tokenization technology existed for years. It stayed niche until institutions moved it toward the financial mainstream. Custodians, broker-dealers, fund administrators, auditors, oracles, and other service providers made institutional investors more comfortable holding and transacting with tokenized assets. Choe’s point is procedural, not technical. The market needed frameworks and counterparties that institutions already trust.
Stablecoins and macro did the heavy lifting
Choe also credits stablecoins with creating the capital conditions for the on-chain RWA market to scale. He describes total stablecoin market capitalization as a “useful proxy” for on-chain “dry powder” that can rotate into tokenized assets.
He ties that shift to timing. Since 2022, the growth and broader acceptance of stablecoins helped the tokenized asset market grow up. At the same time, the macro backdrop changed. Higher interest rates and declining DeFi yields after the 2022 bear market pushed crypto-native capital toward tokenized Treasury products.
That matters because tokenized products did not emerge as purely crypto consumer narratives. They fit the capital flow patterns crypto could support at the time.
Institutional playbooks and the first phase of liquidity
On the institutional side, Choe says asset managers started to look at tokenization through a wider lens than cost-cutting. He points to BlackRock’s 2024 launch of BUIDL as a catalyst that “helped establish a playbook and encouraged other financial institutions” to tokenize existing products or launch new ones.
helped establish a playbook and encouraged other financial institutions
Choe then frames the market as still in an “infrastructure phase.” His view is that liquidity infrastructure use cases arrive first, not last.
He also sketches an evolution path. Crypto-native capital initially moved into tokenized Treasury products for treasury management and yield. As on-chain allocators became comfortable with structural risks that tokenized assets carry, they gradually moved along the risk curve. In Choe’s words, “We expect this progression to continue as onchain capital markets mature.”
He draws another line that investors and users keep blurring. Some tokenized products are yield-bearing while others are not. Choe contrasts tokenized Treasury products with non-yielding assets like tokenized stocks and commodities, which he says show stronger consumer-facing adoption “in certain markets.” For offshore and non-U.S. users, he points to dollar-denominated access as a driver, especially for users already operating with stablecoins.
Exposure is growing faster than ownership
If tokenization is mostly about access, the market is still split on what kind of access people want.
Choe says demand breaks into two segments. Some participants want exposure to an asset’s price performance. Others want ownership of the underlying asset.
He argues the first segment currently looks stronger. He links that to why crypto-style trading behavior maps cleanly onto synthetic products. Leverage, 24/7 trading, and low friction directional exposure fit “synthetic RWA products” and “equity-linked perpetuals.”
Ownership-based tokenized securities are harder. Choe says they must account for corporate actions, transfer-agent integration, custody, disclosures, redemption mechanics, voting rights, tax treatment, and legal enforceability. His takeaway is that real-market rights and real-world process integration take time.
What to watch next
Choe’s thesis lands on a practical timeline problem. If the industry misunderstands tokenization as only a token-issuing exercise, it will keep overestimating how fast markets can become liquid and trusted.
His framing suggests the next battleground is not creation. It is market function. Liquidity infrastructure, distribution channels, and user trust decide whether tokenized assets trade like markets or sit like experiments.
Facts mentioned by Choe
| Topic | What Choe said in the interview | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Tokenization’s main challenge | Building liquidity, infrastructure, distribution, and user trust | Token issuance is easy. Market plumbing is the bottleneck |
| On-chain RWA scale | Roughly $30 billion of tokenized real-world assets on-chain | Signals growth beyond early pilots |
| Stablecoins as “dry powder” | Total stablecoin market cap as proxy for deployable on-chain capital | Connects growth to available liquidity capital |
| Market phase | On-chain capital markets are still in their infrastructure phase | Liquidity and frameworks come before broad market depth |
| Product split | Participants want either price exposure or underlying ownership | Explains why synthetics can scale faster than security-grade tokens |
| Institutional catalyst | BlackRock 2024 launch of BUIDL helped establish a playbook | Incumbents provide process and legitimacy |
Note: The source text ended mid-sentence in the section describing why actual tokenized securities require complex legal and operational work.