This month, centralized institutions and decentralized public chain projects and protocols such as BlackRock, Mantra Chain, Ondo, Alchemy Pay, Yala, and Ant Digital have been advancing and exploring various asset types and protocol infrastructure for the RWA track.
Currently, the RWA track scale has reached $36.5 billion, with industry growth increasing by approximately 60% year-on-year. The track mainly involves private credit, US Treasury bonds, commodities, real estate, stock securities, etc., while RWA in Hong Kong, China, primarily focuses on new energy assets.
Although RWA still faces many challenges, obstacles, and compliance landing issues, as well as global liquidity problems that need to be resolved, the involvement of traditional financial giants and accelerated attempts by governments worldwide make RWA promising in addressing the hollowing out and scale issues of blockchain finance.
Facing the value capture problem in the traditional blockchain world, RWA, as a blockchain financial derivative of traditional assets, perfectly fills the shortest board of the blockchain world. Therefore, we believe that RWA is an important bridge for the traditionalization of cryptocurrency and the cryptoization of traditional finance.
In the Three-Body world, Luo Ji deployed nuclear bombs in the solar orbit using his own life as a trigger mechanism, constructing a deterrence system against the Three-Body civilization using the Dark Forest rule.
In the human world, he was the sword-bearer of Earth.
The "Dark Forest" is also a nickname for blockchain used by most insiders, which is the "original sin" inherent in decentralized characteristics.
For some special fields, RWA might serve as the sword-bearer of this parallel world.
The development of RWA is in full swing. The true goal of RWA is to seamlessly connect traditional finance and decentralized finance, reshaping traditional finance while bringing opportunities from the real world onto the chain, rather than being a set of private protocols on public chains. We look forward to RWA bringing us a global, borderless asset investment and financial expression method. We can imagine purchasing Nasdaq stocks in Hong Kong during the day, depositing money in the Russian Federal Savings Bank in the early morning, and then jointly investing in Dubai real estate with hundreds of shareholders who don't know each other's names the next day.
Yes, we believe RWA can build a world on a public ledger of real assets! A greater, borderless world!
Currently supporting BlackRock's BUIDL token and other assets, such as Hamilton Lane's SCOPE, with plans for future expansion.
Project Financing Related Developments
1. Plume raised $20 million in funding to build a real-world asset financial ecosystem.
2. Tether announced investment in Quantoz, planning to launch a stablecoin compliant with MiCAR regulations and expand its tokenization capabilities through Hadron by Tether Tech.
Hong Kong and China RWA Development Events
1. Conflux Network Collaborates with Ant Digital Technologies
Conflux Network partnered with Ant Digital Technologies to promote RWA growth in Hong Kong. Both parties jointly participated in China's first renewable energy battery exchange RWA project located in Hong Kong, utilizing blockchain technology to build a secure, transparent, and compliant digital infrastructure.
2. Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) Launches "Digital Bond Grant Scheme"
The "Digital Bond Grant Scheme" aims to encourage capital markets to adopt tokenization technology.
Additionally, HKMA initiated the "Project Ensemble" sandbox project to support institutional experimentation with tokenization applications, including traditional securities and RWA.
3. Web3 Conference to be Held in Hong Kong in 2025
At this year's Web3 conference, RWA tokenization was a focal point.
During the conference, discussions centered on HKMA's "Project Ensemble" initiative, which aims to explore innovative market infrastructure to support settlement using tokenized currencies and identify domestic and cross-border use cases.
A stable regulatory environment and diverse product offerings (including virtual assets and tokenized RWA) attracted significant investor interest. However, retail investor participation remains limited due to strict requirements.
4. China Pacific Insurance (CPIC)'s Tokenized Fund
China Pacific Insurance (CPIC) Investment Management Company launched a tokenized USD money market fund (eStable Money Market Fund, MMF) on HashKey Chain.
The fund raised $100 million on its first day, focusing on USD-denominated short-term fixed-income assets and money market instruments. The fund is exclusively for professional and institutional investors, with PAC as the tokenization issuance platform and Standard Chartered Bank providing fund management services.
CPIC plans to continue tokenizing more traditional assets using compliant blockchain platforms, indicating ongoing exploration of RWA in China.
II. Industry Observations and Reflections
Current Main Challenges in RWA Industry Development
[The rest of the translation follows the same approach, maintaining the original structure and translating all text while preserving technical terms and proper nouns.]The development of RWA should not be limited to the professional investor market. Building digital identity authentication, on-chain clearing, and other underlying capabilities will be the most important infrastructure conditions for introducing secondary market liquidity.
(3) RWA can both tokenize traditional finance and traditionalize cryptocurrencies
The two are moving towards each other, not diverging.
Traditional assets rushing to the blockchain are about value release and on-chain liquidity;
While cryptocurrencies rushing to traditional finance are about building monetary niches and value capture, no longer being worthless memecoins.
RWA can truly realize the process of good currency reforming bad currency, making the crypto world have real value support, rather than being a mirage built between decentralized dreams.
Appendix: Details of RWA Regulatory Frameworks in Major Global Jurisdictions as of April 2025
🇺🇸 United States
Regulatory Authorities: SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission)
Core Regulations:
- Security Tokens: Need to pass the Howey Test to determine if they are securities, applicable to registration or exemption clauses of the 1933 Securities Act (such as Reg D, Reg A+).
- Commodity Tokens: Regulated by CFTC, with Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. explicitly classified as commodities.
Key Measures:
- KYC/AML: BlackRock's BUIDL fund is only open to qualified investors (net assets ≥ $1 million), with mandatory on-chain identity verification (such as Circle Verite).
- Expanded Securities Classification: Any RWA involving dividends may be classified as securities. For example: SEC's penalty against tokenized real estate platform Securitize (unregistered securities issuance in 2024).
🇭🇰 Hong Kong
Regulatory Authorities: HKMA (Hong Kong Monetary Authority), SFC (Securities and Futures Commission)
Core Framework:
- The Securities and Futures Ordinance incorporates security tokens into regulation, requiring investor suitability, information disclosure, and anti-money laundering requirements.
- Non-security tokens (such as tokenized commodities) are subject to the Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance.
Key Measures:
- Ensemble Sandbox Program: Testing tokenized bond settlement in two currencies (HKD/offshore RMB), cross-border real estate mortgage (in cooperation with the Bank of Thailand), with participating institutions including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and Ant Chain;
- Stablecoin Gate Policy: Only HKMA-approved stablecoins (such as HKDG, CNHT) are allowed, with USDT and other unregistered coins prohibited.
🇪🇺 European Union
Regulatory Authority: ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority)
Core Regulations:
- MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets): Effective in 2025, requiring RWA issuers to establish EU entities, submit whitepapers, and undergo audits.
- Token Classification: Asset Reference Tokens (ARTs), Electronic Money Tokens (EMTs), and other crypto assets.
Key Measures:
- Liquidity Restrictions: Secondary market trading requires licensing, with DeFi platforms potentially defined as Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs).
- Compliance Shortcuts: Luxembourg fund structures (such as Tokeny gold tokens) become low-cost issuance channels, with compliance costs for small RWA platforms expected to increase by 200%.
🇦🇪 Dubai
Regulatory Authority: DFSA (Dubai Financial Services Authority)
Core Framework:
- Tokenization Sandbox (launched in March 2025): Two phases (intention application, ITL test group), allowing testing of security tokens (stocks, bonds) and derivative tokens.
- Compliance Path: Exemption from some capital and risk control requirements, with the possibility of applying for an official license after 6-12 months of testing.
Advantages: Equivalent to EU regulation, supporting Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) applications, reducing financing costs.
🇸🇬 Singapore
- Security tokens incorporated into the Securities and Futures Act, applicable to exemption clauses (small issuance ≤ 5 million SGD, private placement ≤ 50 people).
- Functional tokens must comply with anti-money laundering regulations, with MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) promoting pilots through sandboxes.
🇦🇺 Australia
- ASIC (Securities and Investments Commission) will classify RWA tokens with revenue rights as financial products, requiring financial services licenses (AFSL) and risk disclosure.
Disclaimer: All articles by DePINone Labs are for information and knowledge purposes only and do not constitute any investment advice.
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