Author: ABC Alpha Researcher
Recently, the cryptocurrency market has remained sluggish, but there has been increasing discussion about RWA (Real World Assets).
Some believe that RWA is a trillion-dollar market, stating: "USDT and USDC are the earliest and most successful dollar RWAs, with a market capitalization nearing $300 billion. A large number of off-chain assets such as real estate, stocks, and bonds can be brought on-chain, presenting a huge opportunity."
This statement sounds reasonable at first glance, but upon further reflection, it has its issues. RWA is not a monolith; the differences between dollar RWA and other RWAs are significant, even incomparable. For other RWAs to achieve rapid development, they need to find their own development paradigms while learning from dollar RWA.
As an investor, if you want to find Alpha opportunities in the RWA space, you first need to clarify the differences between dollar RWA and other RWAs.
Below, ABC Alpha will analyze the differences between the two from four perspectives, helping you understand the current state and challenges of non-monetary RWAs, thereby identifying opportunities to capture Alpha in the RWA space.
1. Use Cases: Dollar RWA has clear demand, while most RWA demand remains vague
USDT and USDC are digital extensions of the dollar, serving the cryptocurrency market's trading settlement, cross-border payments, and hedging needs. These scenarios are high-frequency and essential. For example, in countries with severe inflation (like Argentina and Turkey), dollar stablecoins have become powerful tools for wealth protection, leading to strong user demand.
In contrast, other RWAs, such as real estate tokenization, primarily aim to achieve global financing or enhance asset liquidity through blockchain. This type of demand is low-frequency, with a limited user base. Players in the crypto market are more willing to invest in native assets like BTC, ETH, or meme coins. Off-chain assets with good returns already have mature financing channels, while those with poor returns are actively seeking to go on-chain, further limiting market size.
Summary: Dollar RWA acts as the "supplier" providing liquidity to the crypto market, while other RWAs are the "demanders" seeking liquidity. Although they share the same name, their essence is different. So, are there other non-monetary RWAs that can provide liquidity to the crypto market?
2. Compliance and Trust: Dollar RWA is mature, while most other RWAs still lack it
Regulatory Adaptability
USDC is issued by the regulated Circle, with reserves audited regularly, complying with U.S. monetary regulations; USDT, despite past controversies, has gained market trust through deep cooperation with exchanges. The regulation of other RWAs is much more complex. For instance, bringing real estate on-chain involves legal ownership confirmation and cross-border judicial issues, currently lacking unified standards, making rapid expansion difficult.
Trust Foundation
The core of RWA is the tokenization of credit. Dollar RWA is anchored to the dollar, backed by U.S. national credit, which has a very high level of user trust. Other RWAs rely on the credit of off-chain asset issuers; for example, real estate tokenization requires authoritative institutions to prove ownership; otherwise, users are hesitant to trust that on-chain tokens correspond to physical assets.
Summary: The trust foundation of dollar RWA is unparalleled, while other RWAs struggle to reach it. RWA categories with lower compliance thresholds and easier trust establishment are worth focusing on in the short term.
3. Technical Implementation: Dollar RWA is relatively simple, while other RWAs are relatively complex
The technical logic of dollar stablecoins is clear: on-chain issuance and redemption, with low barriers to entry. The dollar and U.S. Treasury bonds are standardized assets, with low auditing and tracking costs. In contrast, other RWAs involve complex processes such as asset valuation, dividend distribution, and settlement, and require oracles to verify off-chain data in real-time. The on-chain processes for different assets (like real estate) vary significantly, with high compliance standards and technical implementation difficulties, leading to slow development.
Summary: Non-standard RWAs need to customize standards for each asset type, making breakthroughs difficult in the short term. In contrast, RWAs that are relatively easy to standardize, such as gold and bonds, are comparatively easier to develop.
4. Driving Methods: Dollar RWA is bottom-up, while other RWAs are top-down
The rise of USDT originated from user demand: regulatory restrictions on fiat currency purchases led exchanges to introduce USDT trading pairs to solve the problem. As usage increased, it evolved into a digital dollar, integrating into DeFi and cross-border payments. This is a result of market demand driving from the bottom up.
In contrast, RWAs like real estate and stocks are often driven by large institutions seeking financing or liquidity, representing a top-down model. Ordinary users and entrepreneurs have low participation.
Summary: A bottom-up development approach is more suited to the characteristics of the crypto industry. RWA projects that focus more on community development are also more likely to gain users.
Conclusion and Outlook
The success of dollar RWAs like USDT and USDC is attributed to clear demand, high liquidity, a solid trust foundation, low technical barriers, and bottom-up market driving. Other RWAs are hindered by ownership mapping challenges, regulatory uncertainties, technical complexities, and traditional interest resistance, making development arduous.
In the future, for other RWAs to break through, they need to focus on the following directions:
Regulatory Collaboration: Promote cross-border legal recognition of on-chain asset ownership.
Compliance Framework: Develop detailed standards by asset category to accelerate the compliance process.
Infrastructure: Improve RWA oracles, issuance platforms, and cross-chain liquidity protocols.
As investors, we should clarify the differences between dollar RWA and other RWAs and understand the current development situation in the RWA space.
First, we need to pay attention to the development of the U.S. RWA compliance framework, while also focusing on RWAs that are easy to standardize and make transparent (like gold and bonds). Currently, we should pay more attention to infrastructure-type projects in the RWA space, such as RWA oracles, RWA issuance platforms, and RWA liquidity protocols, etc.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
