To unlock real value, tokenized assets need to be tradable
Real-world assets ( RWA) sector has spent years proving that traditional assets can be represented on-chain. Kevin Yunai, Founder and CEO RWA Inc, that debate is now largely resolved. The more important question is whether tokenized assets can create better financial markets.
“Simple tokenization puts the asset representation on-chain,” Yunai says. “Productive on-chain finance is when the assets are available, tradable, loanable, pledgeable, configurable, transparent, and coupled with real economic yields.”
This difference is central to the next step. RWA market. While tokenization alone can create a digital wrapper around an asset, it is not created automatically. liquidityinvestor demand, transparency, or institutional trust. The real innovation begins when tokenized assets become programmable financial instruments associated with verified cash flows, proper disclosure, compliant transferability, and usable market infrastructure.
In Unai’s view, the sector needs to move from being an issuance to a utility. The strongest platforms do more than just help issuers mint asset-backed tokens. These tokens can be accessed by wallets, exchanges, custodians, DeFi infrastructure, reporting systems, and compliant secondary markets;
“Tokenization is not the only innovation,” he says. “This innovation turns real-world assets into fixed-supply, programmable financial instruments.”
Liquidity requires more than token minting
of RWA The industry’s next bottleneck will not be wealth creation. It’s tradeability.
Many tokenized assets currently exist, but relatively few have meaningful liquidity. Yunai believes this is because the market is over-indexed on issuing platforms, while the infrastructure needed to support an active and reliable market is not sufficiently built.
“The industry needs more than a publishing platform,” he said. “We need a complete market infrastructure.”
Its infrastructure includes a regulated secondary market, trusted market makers, standardized disclosures, trusted custody, verified pricing, interoperable compliance, an identity layer, institutional payments, and clear reimbursement mechanisms.
Without these components, tokenization RWA There is a risk that it will become a static digital certificate rather than an active financial instrument. Investors need to understand what they own, how their assets are valued, what risks they are taking, and how they can enter or exit positions under clear rules.
For Unai, liquidity It is not created by minting tokens. It is created by trust, standards, distribution, and market depth. In other words, RWA The sector needs to develop the same institutional infrastructure while supporting traditional markets. blockchain Rails that make these markets more transparent, efficient, and accessible.
Respect both blockchain and legal realities
A recurring mistake with tokenization is that it assumes: blockchain Efficiency can replace legal and operational discipline. Yunai denies that idea.
“You have to respect both worlds,” he said. ” blockchain Achieve speed, transparency, automation, and global reach. Real-world assets require legal enforcement, ownership structures, custody, KYC, reporting, valuation, and redemption processes. ”
This balance is important. Tokenized assets only have value if the tokens are associated with clearly defined economic or ownership rights. That right must be supported by legal documentation, asset custody, investment grade provisions, transfer restrictions, reporting requirements, and redemption procedures.
In other words, a token cannot float apart from the real-world asset it represents. Legal structures must be enforceable. Assets must be verifiable. Investor rights must be clear.
“in RWA “We do not believe in acting as if legal facts disappear just because an asset is tokenized. The correct model is to combine a compliant legal structure with an efficient legal structure,” Yunai said. blockchain rail. ”
blockchain Financial infrastructure can be improved, but the need for good governance will not go away. Especially for educational institutions, the distinction determines: RWA Either it remains a crypto-native experiment or it becomes a mainstream asset class.
Access is prioritized over liquidity
A common argument against tokenization is that it makes it easier to trade traditionally illiquid assets. Yunai believes this to be true, but incompletely. The first benefit is access.
Before tokenization, many investors were locked out of personal finance due to geography, regulations, high minimum investment amounts, banking restrictions, and intermediary controls. Tokenization can alleviate some of these barriers by making participation more efficient, partially and globally accessible.
liquidity I’ll come later.
“It’s both, but access comes first,” Yunai said. “You can’t keep it sustainable.” liquidity Without reliable access first. ”
The order is important. If an asset becomes tradable before investors trust its structure or understand its risks, liquidity The appearance may be shallow or temporary. sustainable liquidity It relies on reliable access, compliant distribution, verified information, and trust in market rules.
So the big promise of tokenization is not just that investors will be able to sell their assets more easily. That means more investors may be able to participate in opportunities that they were previously unable to participate in.
Standards required by institutions
for RWA To become mainstream, institutional investors need confidence. It requires more than just technical infrastructure.
Yunai believes the market needs clear standards for asset verification, custody, enforcement, valuation, disclosure, auditing, compliance, KYC and AML management, transfer restrictions, redemption rights, and continuous reporting.
The goal is comparability. Institutions need to be able to value tokenized assets in the same disciplined way they value traditional financial products. They need to know what they own, who controls the assets, how cash flow is handled, what happens in default, how disputes are resolved, and how information is reported over time.
Without common standards, RWA Risk of Market Fragmentation. Each issuer, platform, jurisdiction, and asset category may operate under different assumptions, making it difficult for investors to assess the overall risk of the product. However, if there are standards, RWA It can become more than a collection of isolated tokenization experiments. These can be an asset class for institutional investors.
Where value occurs within the RWA stack
As tokenization matures, value will no longer be distributed evenly across the stack. Asset originators, custodians, compliance providers, exchanges, and DeFi All protocols have an important role to play. However, Yunai believes that the most strategic position belongs to platforms that manage trust, distribution, and service. liquidity.
“The most value will be given to platforms that manage trust, distribution and liquidity,” he said.
This means that the winner is not necessarily the company that tokenizes the most assets. Issuance is only one part of the market. A more defensible opportunity is to build a trusted financial network around tokenized assets.
These networks must connect asset originators, investors, custodians, compliance systems, price data, market venues, and reporting infrastructure. They must also provide confidence that tokenized assets are authentic, enforceable, compliant, and usable.
In the long term, Unai believes investors also need to capture meaningful value. If tokenization works as intended, it should reduce friction, increase transparency, lower barriers to access, and open the door to higher quality opportunities.
The real benefit is not tokenizing assets for the sake of tokenizing. We are building a more efficient market around them.
From crypto niche to capital market infrastructure
The RWA sector is often measured by the total amount of tokenized assets. Yuuchi believes that while numbers are important, they should not be the only definition of success.
“Success is not just about trillions of dollars being tokenized,” he said. “If the infrastructure is built correctly, we will get this number.”
A more meaningful sign of progress would be deep secondary markets, institutional-level standards, global investor access, transparent reporting, and tokenized assets becoming part of everyday financial infrastructure.
Yunai doesn’t want RWA to be seen as a crypto niche in five years. He sees these as part of the next evolution of capital markets, where real assets, digital rails, compliant access and programmable finance work together.
That vision requires the industry to move beyond basic issuance. It requires market depth, legal clarity, investor protection, reliable infrastructure, and assets that create real economic value.
“The goal is not just to tokenize the old financial system,” Yunai said. “The goal is to build something better.”
