[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] Real-world assets (RWA) are back in the spotlight. An analysis says a market once marked by hype and failures is now being re-evaluated amid a broader shift in global financial infrastructure. Blockchain media outlet BeInCrypto reported the details on Feb. 19 (local time).

RWA refers to issuing traditional financial assets such as real estate, gold, government bonds and stocks as blockchain-based tokens so they can be traded. The goal is to turn immovable real-world assets into digital assets that can be traded around the clock across borders.

The early RWA market disappointed expectations. Maecenas, which promoted art tokenisation in 2018 to 2019, drew attention with the idea that investors could own fractional shares of an Andy Warhol work. It has effectively disappeared from the market due to a lack of liquidity in secondary trading and insufficient legal protection.

In late 2022, Freeway, which promised high returns, collapsed and about $160 million was frozen. It claimed to offer “real-world-based returns” but lacked transparency, and its token price plunged 75 percent in a short period. That fuelled criticism that RWA amounted to marketing rhetoric.

Still, the idea itself is seen as valid. A recent outlook expects the asset tokenisation market to grow to $9.43 trillion by 2030 and post average annual growth of more than 72 percent from 2025 to 2030.

Market sentiment is also changing. The view is that investors who once chased meme coins touting “100x returns” are now focusing on stable returns and real-world-backed assets. Expectations are spreading that blockchain can improve traditional finance’s access problems, limited trading hours and complex intermediary structures.

Stablecoin issuer Tether has recently moved aggressively to secure real-world assets, including stakes in agricultural companies, gold holdings and investments in offline companies, strengthening its RWA strategy. It is expanding beyond issuing dollar-pegged tokens toward directly holding physical assets.

Traditional finance is also accelerating. Large institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan Chase and Franklin Templeton are building blockchain-based asset management and payment infrastructure, pushing tokenisation from an experimental stage toward commercial use. The focus of discussion is shifting from “is it possible” to “how quickly will it spread”.

Risks remain. The risk of past “rug pulls” has decreased, but the market now faces new variables such as regulatory clashes and legal liability. As tokenisation spreads, the influence of regulators and major financial institutions will inevitably grow.

Unlike the fully decentralised model that cryptocurrencies pursued, RWA is likely to develop into a hybrid structure combining a centralised financial system with blockchain. One assessment is that this is closer to recoding the existing financial order than bringing it down.

In the end, the key issue is not market size. A more important question than whether a $10 trillion market forms is “who will dominate this market”. If large institutions with legal structures, liquidity and regulatory access seize the pipeline, the RWA revolution is likely to unfold as an extension of institutional finance rather than decentralised idealism.