When the narrative bubble bursts, what are the truly valuable crypto assets?

This article takes "value mechanism" as its core entry point, first exploring which tokens possess sustainable value that transcends economic cycles under the test of economic policy uncertainty and transnational economic activities.

Author: FinTax

1 Introduction

In scenarios such as cross-border payments, asset preservation, and capital flows, the applicability of different financial instruments and institutional arrangements will show more significant differences under high uncertainty. Compared with traditional settlement systems that rely on centralized intermediaries, on-chain assets inherently possess the technical characteristics of cross-border transfer, self-custody, and not being entirely dependent on a single institution. Therefore, in some scenarios involving sanctions, high inflation, or restricted capital flows, they are more easily used for value transfer, risk buffering, and asset allocation.

Taking Iran as an example, under extreme external pressure, the Iranian rial plummeted ³⁰ times in exchange rate against the US dollar in the open market.¹ In the face of extreme macroeconomic shocks, on-chain assets, characterized by cross-border transferability, self-custody, and resistance to single-point freezes, were rapidly adopted by cross-border trade participants and local residents as risk buffers and alternative capital channels. Chainalysis research shows that Iran's crypto ecosystem reached approximately $7.78 billion in 2025, with on-chain activity showing a high correlation with major macroeconomic events. However, the cross-border flow of such assets also carries significant compliance risks. While its census-resistance feature provides users with autonomy, it may also provide opportunities for illicit financial flows. Balancing innovation and regulation has become a common challenge for global policymakers.

The short-term "channel value" under macroeconomic fluctuations cannot mask the deep-seated value differentiation in the crypto asset market. The long-term, blind expansion of token supply contrasts sharply with the rapid demise of a massive number of projects: data from CoinGecko Research shows that over 13.4 million previously listed crypto projects have ultimately ceased trading and been deemed ^failures . This enormous "death list" profoundly demonstrates that foundationless assets driven solely by "issuance-financing-narrative" cannot maintain long-term consensus; market funds and liquidity will inevitably converge towards a few assets with sustainable value mechanisms.

Against this backdrop, this paper takes "value mechanism" as its core entry point. First, it explores which tokens possess sustainable value that transcends economic cycles under the test of economic policy uncertainty and transnational economic activities. Second, it deeply analyzes why the regulatory system in the evolution of global digital finance inevitably presents an evolutionary path from the governance of financing chaos to the governance of market infrastructure, and then to classification rules and data reporting.

2. Theoretical Basis

2.1 Theoretical Definition and Three Fundamental Proofs of Tokenization

The World Economic Forum (WEF) defines “tokenization” in its 2025 report as: the process of representing ownership of assets in a transferable digital format using a programmable ledger¹. Unlike traditional financial systems that rely on fragmented external messaging (such as the SWIFT system), tokenization theoretically builds a shared system of record, which, combined with smart contracts, enables a unified system of record, flexible custody models, and on-chain governance.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in its Unified Ledger architecture blueprint, further points out that tokenization integrates information transmission, reconciliation, and settlement into a single, seamless operation. This leap in underlying architecture significantly reduces trust friction and compliance costs in cross-border business collaborations. Its theoretical framework is built upon three fundamental proofs: First, Proof of Value. Asset issuance must have a verifiable value basis—either supported by cash flow from the real economy or by broad network consensus. This ensures that on-chain assets are not fabricated "narrative bubbles." Second, Proof of Ownership. Ownership must be clearly defined, and the right to dispose of assets must be directly granted to the legitimate holder. Distributed ledgers use cryptographic means to exclusively establish ownership, cutting off dependence on centralized intermediaries and technically avoiding the tail risk of assets being frozen or misappropriated at a single point. Third, Proof of Transaction. This requires generating immutable and verifiable transaction history and evidence of clearing and settlement. This means that every cross-border capital flow is fully traceable, providing the underlying data foundation for post-event compliance audits and penetrating supervision.

These three proofs together constitute the logical starting point for the tokenization and reconstruction of financial infrastructure: the proof of value establishes the basis for asset issuance, the proof of ownership reconstructs the form of property rights realization, and the proof of transaction reshapes the trust mechanism for clearing and settlement.

2.2 Two Core Token Models: Native and Supported

Current tokenization models can be divided into two basic categories in terms of value capture mechanisms: native tokens and backed tokens. The ability of the two to weather macroeconomic cycles differs significantly, stemming from their different value anchors.

Native tokens are assets issued directly on-chain, possessing embedded records of issuance, transactions, and ownership. These assets (such as native assets on public chains like Ethereum) are typically not pegged to external physical assets; their core function is to serve as a settlement medium within the network and a "security budget" to maintain the decentralized system. Specifically, native tokens attract nodes to maintain network consensus through economic incentive models (such as Proof-of-Stake (PoS) staking) and act as network gas fees when users invoke smart contracts and execute complex business logic. The sustainable value of native tokens is deeply tied to the public chain network's ability to continuously reduce friction costs for real-world economic activities—their value is derived from the prosperity of the network ecosystem and the frequency of actual use. In short, the value anchor of native tokens is network utility.

Support tokens are also issued and circulated on-chain, but their value is strictly pegged to off-chain assets. The core mission of support tokens is to bring real yield from traditional financial markets onto the blockchain. In the current climate of heightened economic policy uncertainty, support tokens demonstrate significant practical value. For example, tokenizing high-quality liquid assets such as US Treasury bonds not only provides traditional assets with 24/7, divisible global liquidity but also offers on-chain funds a risk-free rate benchmark that is detached from the high volatility of the crypto market. For companies with international operations, this constitutes a tool for efficient liquidity management, hedging against currency depreciation, and reducing cross-border friction costs in a complex macroeconomic environment. The value anchor of support tokens is the value of off-chain assets.

The essential difference between the two types of tokens is that the value of native tokens comes from the network itself, and their sustainability depends on whether the ecosystem can continuously create value that reduces costs and increases efficiency; the value of supporting tokens comes from off-chain mapping, and their sustainability depends on the credit quality and redemption capability of the pegged assets.

3. Economic Analysis of Sustainable Token Value

After several bull and bear market cycles, the crypto asset market is undergoing a profound value correction. Data from CoinGecko Research shows that over 13.4 million crypto projects driven solely by "issuance-fundraising-narrative" have ultimately ceased trading and been eliminated from the market. This massive "death list" reveals a fundamental pattern: speculative assets lacking underlying asset support and real-world application scenarios are destined to fail to maintain market consensus when macro liquidity recedes.

From an institutional economics perspective, for a token to possess sustainable value that transcends economic cycles and withstands external macroeconomic shocks, it must essentially be able to substantially reduce friction costs in real-world economic operations and establish a robust rights structure. This sustainable value can be analyzed from the following three dimensions.

3.1 Macro hedging

Enterprises rely heavily on stable, low-friction cross-border payment networks in their international expansion and cross-border trade. However, the traditional correspondent banking model, with its lengthy clearing chain and complex compliance processes, generates significant institutional friction. As of the first quarter of 2025, World Bank data shows that the average cost of global cross-border remittances remained as high as 6.49%, with explicit fees through traditional banking channels reaching an average of 12% to 13%.^³ Table 1 shows the cross-border remittance costs in different regions globally. Furthermore, due to macroeconomic instability, cross-border remittance costs in some regions are showing an upward trend. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) also pointed out in its "Agorá Project" research that the existing cross-border payment system is challenging, while tokenization technology can integrate information transmission, reconciliation, and settlement into a single, seamless operation.

Table 1. Cross-border remittance costs in selected regions of the world

Data source: RemitBee ⁴

When economic policy uncertainty rises sharply—for example, extreme capital controls or sanctions resulting from geopolitical games, or the disruption of SWIFT network connections during a macroeconomic crisis—traditional cross-border capital flows not only face high implicit and explicit costs, but also an availability crisis due to the possibility of funds being frozen at any time. In this situation, the value of tokens is primarily reflected in their ability to act as an independent, censorship-resistant channel for macroeconomic hedging.

Chainalysis's global macroeconomic data validates this logic: in regions experiencing extreme pressures such as runaway inflation or escalating geopolitical conflicts, retail and corporate users tend to convert funds on a large scale into backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC to maintain cross-border supply chains and hedge against rapid depreciation of their local currencies. These on-chain assets, issued based on programmable ledgers, return control of assets to end users through a self-custody mechanism, severing reliance on a single centralized financial intermediary. For multinational economic entities, this globally liquid on-chain value network has become a capital buffer against the tail risks of macroeconomic policies.

3.2 Anchoring to Real Yield

The demise of countless "air coins" proves that token economics, which relies purely on community sentiment and Ponzi schemes, cannot last. The World Economic Forum points out that tokens with sustainable viability must possess clearly defined "embedded rights," that is, legal economic and governance rights granted to holders at the underlying code level in an immutable manner.

Market funds are undergoing a clear structural migration: accelerating their convergence towards assets with "real yield." A World Economic Forum report shows that the total transaction volume of stablecoins and other backing tokens reached $27.6 trillion in 2024, exceeding the combined transaction volume of Visa and Mastercard. The market capitalization of stablecoins has generally shown a continuous upward trend since 2020 (see Figure 1. Year data in the figure refers to January of that year). From a macro-capital efficiency perspective, there is a potential pool of approximately $230 trillion in collateral globally, but due to the inefficiency and time friction of physical circulation in the traditional financial system, only about $25 trillion in securities have been actually activated and used as collateral.

Tokenizing high-quality liquid assets (HQLA, such as US Treasury bonds) not only endows traditional assets with 24/7, infinitely divisible, and globally transferable capabilities, but also directly introduces the risk-free rate of return of the real economy onto the blockchain. This mechanism constructs a valuation anchor that is detached from pure crypto speculation, aligning the value logic of supporting tokens with classic valuation models in modern finance, and providing a new liquidity tool for corporate treasury fund management. Market performance confirms this: during periods of heightened macroeconomic volatility, the circulation and trading activity of compliant stablecoins have both increased significantly, reflecting the market's substantial demand for "verifiable value anchors." Research by the International Monetary Fund (2025) indicates that tokenizing central bank reserves is a key path to maintaining the core settlement function of central bank money in the digital asset ecosystem. Its essence is a migration of the technological carrier of the existing reserve system, rather than the creation of new central bank liabilities.

3.3 Reduce friction and costs

In the micro-level operations of enterprises and the lifecycle of financial clearing and settlement, the core value of sustainable tokens stems from their reconstruction of contract execution efficiency. In traditional capital markets, corporate actions such as dividend payments, stock splits, and voting are not only time-consuming and labor-intensive, but also prone to information asymmetry and reconciliation errors due to the unstructured nature of the data.

The programmability of smart contracts offers a new paradigm for solving this problem: the immutable code mechanism effectively prevents unilateral rule changes and reshapes business trust through standardized operations. Commercial contracts such as cross-border compliance checks (KYC/AML), complex asset service transfers, and automated profit distribution can all be transformed into automatically executable program code. Furthermore, smart contracts achieve "atomic settlement" (DvP), fundamentally eliminating reconciliation friction and counterparty risk in cross-border collaborations.

Thus, the sustainable value of native tokens is established: they serve as a "system security budget" and network fuel (Gas Fee) to maintain the efficient and secure operation of the decentralized underlying ledger. This value logic has been validated by the market—on public chains such as Ethereum, network activity and native token consumption are highly positively correlated, and the prosperity of the application ecosystem directly translates into token value capture. As long as the underlying public chain can continuously bring substantial cost reduction and efficiency improvement to real-world cross-border payments, supply chain finance, and clearing and settlement systems, the value cycle of its native tokens can establish a self-consistent flywheel effect.

4. Governance of Disorder and Infrastructure Construction

If the underlying programmable mechanism of tokens determines their intrinsic value across economic cycles, then the ever-evolving regulatory framework defines their survival boundaries and compliance costs within the modern macroeconomic system. PwC's annual regulatory report also argues that regulation is no longer a constraint, but rather an active reshaping of the market, enabling digital assets to become a responsibly scalable architecture.^⁶ Globally, crypto asset regulation has shown a clear evolutionary path over time, from "governance of chaotic financing" to "governance of market infrastructure," and then to "classification rules and data-driven reporting." The core driving force is that, with the expansion of the crypto market and the leap in asset complexity, the contagion path of financial risk has fundamentally shifted from the isolated crypto ecosystem to traditional cross-border capital flows and the macroeconomic financial stability system.

4.1 Evolution of Regulatory Path over Time

From the perspective of the life cycle of cross-border capital flows, the evolution of regulatory paths reflects both a passive response to and proactive prevention of prominent risks at different stages, which can be divided into three stages:

4.1.1 First Phase: Governance of Irregularities in Financing

In the early stages of the crypto market, it was flooded with projects driven solely by narratives. Due to vague asset definitions and a lack of real-economy cash flow support, financial risks manifested primarily as regulatory arbitrage, illegal fundraising, and the resulting losses to investors. Many projects failed after a brief period of trading. Faced with this chaos, regulatory efforts focused on severing the disorderly exchange channels between traditional fiat currencies and unfounded tokens, aiming to prevent the illegal outflow of cross-border capital and its systemic disruption to the macro-financial order. The core characteristic of this phase was "containment-style regulation"—with the primary goal of curbing risk spillover.

4.1.2 Second Phase: Market Infrastructure Governance

As the crypto ecosystem has evolved, centralized exchanges (CEXs) and custodians have expanded rapidly, leading to extreme institutional concentration risks. However, these institutions, operating in a lack of regulation, commonly suffer from commingling of funds and deficiencies in internal controls. When faced with tightening macro liquidity or economic policy uncertainties, these centralized nodes, lacking risk buffers, are highly susceptible to triggering bank runs similar to those in traditional banks, generating strong pro-cyclical effects. Therefore, regulatory focus has shifted to building resilience in underlying infrastructure. Policymakers have begun mandating bankruptcy remoteness and independent third-party custody to ensure the integrity of customer assets in the event of institutional failure, thereby breaking the chain of systemic risk contagion caused by a single point of failure. This phase is marked by "institutional regulation"—introducing traditional financial infrastructure security standards into the crypto ecosystem.

4.1.3 Third Stage: Classification Details and Data Reporting

As blockchain technology is gradually absorbed by the mainstream financial system to reduce cross-border transaction friction, regulation enters a more complex phase. Regulators realize that a one-size-fits-all approach is no longer adequate for the complexities of asset classes. Cutting-edge regulations, such as the EU's Crypto Asset Market Regulation (MiCA) and Liechtenstein's Token and Trusted Technology Service Providers Act (TVTG), define tokens as "containers of rights" and implement categorized regulation based strictly on their underlying economic characteristics. Simultaneously, regulatory tools are rapidly evolving towards digitalization and API-based approaches, requiring 24/7 comprehensive monitoring of on-chain liquidity and cross-border capital flows through unified data reporting interfaces. The core characteristic of this stage is "embedded regulation"—integrating compliance requirements into the underlying technology.

4.2 Differentiated Regulation Based on Token Value Type

Regulators have adopted differentiated compliance requirements and policy tools for tokens with different value anchors.

The regulatory logic for native tokens aims to strengthen network resilience and anti-money laundering transparency. Non-anonymous crypto assets, due to their potential regulatory compliance advantages, have a significantly higher average market capitalization than their anonymous counterparts (Cremers et al., 2025). Native tokens possess decentralized and bearer-like characteristics, with their issuance and settlement completed in a closed-loop on-chain process. In a complex macroeconomic environment, this anonymity provides users with autonomy but can also be abused to circumvent compliance requirements. International anti-money laundering regulators (such as the FATF) have listed anti-money laundering transparency of Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) as a key regulatory area in their repeatedly updated guidance. For native tokens and their service providers, regulatory tools heavily rely on on-chain analytics and the mandatory implementation of the FATF's "Travel Rule," requiring the penetration and recording of the true identity information of both parties in a transaction.^⁷ This means achieving compliance transparency through the service provider环节 (link/stage) without compromising the decentralized network architecture.

The regulatory logic behind backed tokens (STTs) is to anchor them to the auditing and liquidity management of off-chain assets. The cornerstone of STT value lies in their guaranteed redemption of off-chain assets. Their core vulnerability lies in the potential maturity mismatch and value decoupling between on-chain ledger proof and off-chain real reserves. Faced with macroeconomic shocks, regulators are strictly focused on preventing "de-pegging" risks. A regulatory proposal released by the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in February 2026 explicitly requires stablecoin issuers to maintain 100% high-quality liquid asset reserves and accept monthly reports and annual reviews, introducing traditional financial asset auditing standards to on-chain transactions in a more refined manner. Modern regulatory frameworks mandate that issuers introduce ^high -frequency independent third-party audits, strictly limit the proportion of high-risk asset investments, and establish dual liquidity pools to ensure 100% or even excess high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) covering the circulating supply. In other words, traditional financial asset auditing standards provide credit support for on-chain value anchoring.

4.3 “Code-based” compliance rules

When dealing with high-frequency and complex multinational corporate transactions, traditional ex-post accountability-based regulation faces high cross-border enforcement costs and information lag. To strike a balance between promoting capital flow efficiency and maintaining financial security, regulatory agencies in many countries are actively promoting the underlying innovation of "codification of compliance rules".

By introducing token standards specifically designed for compliance (such as ERC-3643, i.e., the T-REX protocol), digital identity verification (KYC/AML), anti-money laundering travel rule thresholds, and capital transfer restrictions in specific jurisdictions are directly hard-coded into the underlying smart contracts. This means that if a tokenized asset transfer initiated by a multinational corporation fails to meet the pre-set compliance whitelist conditions or triggers a dynamically updated sanctions blacklist, the transaction will be automatically blocked at the blockchain protocol level. This regulatory infrastructure innovation, which transforms legal logic into immutable code logic, not only significantly reduces the compliance verification costs of cross-border commerce but also provides infrastructure protection for legitimate capital flows under extreme macroeconomic shocks. This marks a fundamental shift in the regulatory paradigm from "post-event accountability" to "pre-event embedding." The DFCRC report estimates that, if the regulatory framework is clear, the tokenized finance market could generate tens of billions of Australian dollars in economic benefits for Australia, and the release of the potential of digital assets is dependent on the construction of regulatory infrastructure.^⁹

5. Summary and Outlook

Tokenization technology is driving a fundamental restructuring of the global financial infrastructure, while macro-geopolitical conflicts and persistently high economic policy uncertainty are serving as a stress test for this emerging value vehicle. Amidst the dramatic fluctuations, purely narrative bubbles and baseless assets in the crypto market are gradually being stripped away, and market attention and liquidity are rapidly converging towards tokens backed by real value.

This study demonstrates that truly sustainable tokens capable of navigating economic cycles typically possess several distinct characteristics: First, they provide a real yield anchor, bringing off-chain asset credit onto the blockchain; second, they substantially reduce the execution costs of cross-border transaction contracts, reshaping business trust through programmability; and third, they serve as a cybersecurity budget for decentralized networks, their value rooted in the actual frequency of use and cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing capabilities within the ecosystem. These tokens are not speculative symbols detached from reality, but rather value carriers embedded in real economic activities, capable of carrying specific functions, benefit relationships, or rights arrangements.

Currently, the global regulatory framework has shifted from early passive containment to proactive, embedded rule-making. Through detailed classification rules and compliance coding, regulators are prudently incorporating high-quality digital assets into mainstream clearing and settlement systems.

In response to this irreversible trend in financial evolution, this article offers the following suggestions to various market participants:

For businesses, on-chain assets should be viewed as an infrastructure tool to improve the efficiency of global capital turnover. In cross-border settlement scenarios, compliant stablecoins should be prioritized to hedge against the risk of fiat currency exchange rate fluctuations and reduce regulatory frictions. At the same time, it is necessary to strictly distinguish between highly volatile native tokens and strictly regulated supported tokens, and implement differentiated fund management strategies.

For issuers and financial institutions, the old logic of "issuing tokens is equivalent to financing" must be completely abandoned. The focus of digital asset design should shift entirely to "rights embedding"—clearly and immutably defining asset attributes in the underlying smart contracts, actively adopting compliance-oriented token standards such as ERC-3643, and providing the market with transparent, real-time auditable proof of value and real reserve support.

For policymakers, it is recommended to uphold the prudent principle of technological neutrality and promote regulatory paradigm innovation based on "compliance as code." While adhering to the bottom line of preventing transnational money laundering and systemic financial risks, it is advisable to guide the construction of a unified ledger based on multilateral consensus, deeply integrating national sovereign credit with programmable technology to build the next-generation financial infrastructure adapted to the digital economy era.

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