Capital has never been stagnant; it always seeks new channels. When US Treasury bonds are minted into tokens, and Japanese stablecoins are launched, the financial foundation begins to be reshaped on the chain; when medical patents, computing power resources, and AI infrastructure are divided into tradable shares, industrial tributaries gradually converge; when exchange equity is brought to the stage, the Bull's surge and Gemini's struggle suddenly cause waves to surge.
RWA is quietly rewriting the flow of capital, making treasury bonds and stablecoins the riverbed, lifting the most solid base color; it allows industrial assets to branch out, transforming research, computing power, and property into circulating nutrients; it triggers massive waves in exchanges, sweeping high risks and high premiums into the torrent.
This is a new capital river - flowing through the intersection of finance and industry, and rushing towards a globalized and transparent future. Whoever can understand the direction of this river will be the first to touch the pulse of RWA.
Financial Foundation: From Treasury Bonds to Stablecoins
The tokenization of financial assets is the first path validated by the RWA market. Ondo Finance from the United States can be considered an industry pioneer, successfully moving US Treasury bonds, the most stable asset type globally, onto the chain, issuing USDY, a tokenized asset backed by treasury bonds. After USDY went live on the Sei network, it became the first treasury bond asset token deployed on a high-performance public chain. It combines the liquidity of stablecoins and the safety of treasury bonds, satisfying global investors' risk appetite while demonstrating the composability of on-chain financial instruments. This means investors can obtain transparent and automated profit distribution rights without holding actual bonds. Ondo thus becomes a benchmark case for traditional financial asset tokenization, bringing "on-chain treasury bonds" into public view for the first time.
In response, Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) approved the first yen stablecoin JPYC in 2025. JPYC is backed by high-liquidity assets such as government bonds, ensuring a 1:1 peg to the yen. Its launch not only strengthens the yen's position in the global digital financial system but also becomes a typical case of a compliant stablecoin in Asia. Compared to the dollar stablecoin-dominated landscape, JPYC found a breakthrough for local currency stablecoins in the Asian market. For Japan, it is not just a digital payment experiment but a strategic layout to enhance the internationalization of its national currency.
Simultaneously, changes in the US regulatory environment are equally significant. In August 2025, the Federal Reserve officially closed the "New Activity Supervision Plan" for bank crypto businesses, reintegrating crypto businesses into regular supervision. The OCC and FDIC also simultaneously relaxed banking business restrictions, canceling pre-approval requirements. This policy loosening means banks can more freely engage in crypto and RWA businesses, promoting deep integration between financial institutions and the crypto market. For RWA, this is a signal of institutional barriers being removed, allowing more financial institutions to explore low-risk RWA.
In this trend, stablecoins and treasury bond tokenization become the "financial foundation" of RWA. They are like a riverbed, providing a solid base for subsequent industrial exploration and capitalization waves.
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From pharmaceutical R&D, computing power, and AI infrastructure to finance and equity assets, these practices are like tributaries flowing into the mainstream, not only expanding the application scenarios of RWA but also promoting the deep integration of capital and industry. Low-risk assets provide a solid foundation for the riverbed, while industrial assets explore innovative tributaries, and these tributaries are converging into a broader, more transparent, and more efficient global RWA river.
Capital Frontier: Exchanges' Capitalization Experiments
Compared to financial cornerstones and industrial tributaries, exchange equity RWA is more like a capital market wave, turbulent with both risks and opportunities.
Coinbase and Robinhood's practices unveiled the prelude to this wave.
Coinbase is implementing a "trading everything on-chain" strategy, aiming to move stocks, derivatives, and even physical assets onto the chain, creating an all-weather, cross-asset trading platform. Its tokenized stock business is expected to leverage a market worth trillions of dollars, bringing investors a more efficient and transparent trading experience. Robinhood has chosen a retail-friendly path, planning to establish a Real World Assets Exchange (RRE): conducting high-frequency trading matching off-chain, achieving instant settlement on-chain, and enabling cross-chain interoperability, self-custody, and built-in KYC/AML compliance through its self-developed Robinhood Chain. Their explorations together demonstrate that exchange RWA is not just a high-risk speculative tool, but an important bridge connecting traditional capital markets and the digital asset ecosystem.
On August 13, 2025, Bull successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange, with its stock price soaring from the issue price of $37 to $68 on the first day, with its market value momentarily exceeding $10 billion and a first-day surge of 83%, far surpassing the traditional IPO average of 20-30%, becoming a focal point in the global capital market. Bull's success lies not only in market enthusiasm but also in institutional backing: BlackRock and ARK Fund became cornerstone investors, with an underwriting team including Wall Street giants like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Jefferies. More importantly, Bull's holdings of 24,300 Bitcoins, 12,600 Ethereums, and $3.4 billion in cash and stablecoins provide solid valuation support. Since 2021, it has accumulated a trading volume of over $1.25 trillion, with a daily average trading volume of $2.6 billion, with its customer base primarily consisting of quantitative and hedge funds. Founder Tom Farley stated, "The era driven by retail investors has passed, and the institutional wave is approaching." Additionally, Bull's success reflects the close integration of exchange RWA and on-chain assets, verifying the huge attractiveness of high-risk RWA in the capital market and reflecting the potential volatility and uncertainty of this market.
Compared to Bull's aggressive stance, Gemini's path to capitalization has been more arduous. In 2025, it submitted an S1 application to the SEC, seeking a Nasdaq listing. Financial data shows a net loss of $282.5 million in the first half of 2025, far higher than the $41.4 million in the same period of 2024. However, Gemini sought breakthroughs through strategic adjustments: migrating users to the new Florida entity "Moonbase" to alleviate New York regulatory pressure; retaining the New York trust license to maintain core compliance; and introducing a $75 million credit line from Ripple (expandable to $150 million), settled with the stablecoin RLUSD, providing operational liquidity and showcasing a new model of stablecoin and exchange linkage. The underwriting team includes Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, and Cantor Fitzgerald, almost encompassing all top Wall Street investment banks. Gemini's case illustrates that even for exchanges with uncertain capital market prospects, compliance innovation and stablecoin support can attract institutional and market attention.
The comparison between Bull, Gemini, Coinbase, and Robinhood reveals the trend of high-risk RWA gradually entering mainstream capital markets: the former achieving high-premium listings through substantial assets and institutional backing, while the latter expand investment boundaries through compliance innovation, stablecoin linkage, or on-chain trading. Whether through high-risk experiments, on-chain ecosystem construction, or retail democratization, these practices indicate that exchange RWA is becoming an important part of financial experimentation, carrying both enormous opportunities and uncertainties.
(The rest of the translation follows the same approach, maintaining the specified translations for specific terms.)In May 2025, the RWA Research Institute, in collaboration with authoritative institutions such as China Search and China Electronics Digital Scene Technology Research Institute, initiated the establishment of the "China RWA Industry Think Tank", focusing on the global compliance development of asset digitization. The think tank empowers the real economy through three core directions: first, leading the development of international collaborative norms such as the "RWA Project Evaluation Standards"; second, building a digital service chain of "asset chaining - cross-border circulation - global trading", integrating blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies; third, establishing cross-border compliant channels with Hong Kong and Shenzhen as hubs, promoting green finance and cross-border investment and financing innovation. Meanwhile, the think tank relies on the "dual-chain integration architecture" (national-level alliance chain and cross-chain protocol collaborative mechanism) to strengthen technological autonomy and data security, and deepen cross-border collaboration and compliance governance.
