This week, news and activity from self-proclaimed experts, media, and players alike has been abuzz with the fresh new opportunity of tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). According to the Boston Consulting Group, this market is projected to become a $16 trillion market by 2030. Here is a roundup of RWA news from around the world for the week ending July 27, 2023.
Avalanche has initiated a program for financial institutions to test blockchain services on one of its subnets. Credix, a decentralized finance platform, has opened a trade receivables lending pool with the Solana Foundation among the investors. In Spain, a firm has started issuing tokens representing equity in a real estate investment trust under Spain’s new digital asset supervision. Across Asia, projects dedicated to asset tokenization have become a cornerstone of the new digital economy. In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is leading a pilot initiative to explore and showcase real estate asset tokenization solutions. In the U.K., the Law Commissioner’s report on digital assets (released in June 2023) may lead to the country becoming an NFT hub. In France, the blockchain arm of 150-year-old investment bank Société Générale has been issued the first digital-asset service provider license. Binance Research has released a report on the tokenization of real-world assets, with profiles of three popular protocols.
The true addressable market is the entire global asset market, given that anything tokenizable could be represented as RWAs on-chain, said Binance Research. Traditional finance giants are excited about the idea of putting ownership of assets like precious metals, art, homes and more on the blockchain. CoinDesk’s managing editor of Learn, Toby Bochan, has written an excellent explainer for beginners on what tokenization of real-world assets is, how it works, and what the future holds.