Who Actually Benefits from the Tokenization of RWAs And Why?

I touched on this last week and Andy from the Rollup also asked around about this. The question keeps coming up: "Who actually benefits from the tokenization of real-world assets?"

The real answer = almost everyone - but for very different reasons, on very different timelines, and with very different thesis mechanics underneath.

1. The Retail Thesis - From Spectator to Participant

Retail investors have been systematically excluded from the highest-performing asset classes for decades. Not because the assets were too complex, but because the infrastructure was designed for large ticket sizes, accredited gatekeeping, and slow settlement rails that make small allocations uneconomical.

Tokenization doesn't just lower the barrier. It removes the architecture that created the barrier in the first place.

Think about what it actually means to "invest in private credit" as a retail investor today. You can't. Not really. The minimum is typically $250K–$1M. You need accredited status. The fund has a 3–7 year lockup. There's no secondary market. You're at the mercy of the GP's timeline.

Now tokenize that same fund:

• Fractional ownership - You don't need $1M. You need $100. The smart contract handles the unit economics that made small allocations too expensive to administer.

• 24/7 access - No market hours. No settlement windows. No waiting for a wire to clear. You interact with the asset when you want, from wherever you are.

• Global reach - A retail investor in Lagos, Jakarta, or São Paulo accesses the same tokenized treasury fund as someone sitting in Manhattan.

• Composability - This is the thesis within the thesis. Once you hold a tokenized asset, it's not just sitting in your wallet. It's programmable capital. You can post it as collateral in a lending protocol. You can use it in a vault strategy. You can move it between platforms without calling a broker.

The Deeper Point

Retail doesn't just get "cheaper access to the same stuff." Retail gets access to entirely new financial behaviours. The ability to hold a tokenized US Treasury, use it as collateral to borrow stablecoins, and deploy that capital into a yield strategy, all in one afternoon, all self-custodied, all without a single phone call to a wealth manager….

Before tokenization, retail was a spectator in global capital markets. After tokenization, retail becomes a participant. And the gap between those two things is enormous.

2. The Issuer Thesis - Faster Capital, Wider Funnel, Lower Cost

The Core Thesis

For issuers, the thesis is simple: tokenization makes raising capital faster, cheaper, and open to a dramatically larger investor base. Every issuer on the planet cares about those three things. Tokenization delivers all of them simultaneously.

The Full Breakdown

Let's walk through what actually changes when an issuer moves from traditional issuance to tokenized issuance:

Traditional issuance takes weeks to months to settle. Tokenized issuance settles in minutes to hours. Traditional issuance requires custodians, transfer agents, brokers, and clearing houses. Tokenized issuance uses smart contracts to handle distribution, compliance, and settlement. Traditional issuance limits your investor base by geography, regulation, and minimum ticket sizes. Tokenized issuance opens that up to a global investor base, 24/7, with fractional entry points. Traditional issuance means high admin overhead - manual reconciliation, quarterly reporting, cap table management. Tokenized issuance automates reporting, gives you transparent onchain cap tables, and real-time data. Traditional product structures are rigid and slow to modify. Tokenized products offer programmable tranches, redemption terms, and yield mechanisms. And where traditional minimums of $100K–$1M+ keep most investors out, fractional issuance opens the funnel to thousands more.

The Capital Thesis

Issuers who tokenize aren't just saving money on back-office operations. They're accessing capital they literally could not reach before.

A traditional private credit fund serves 50–200 institutional LPs. It takes months to close a round. The GP spends significant time and resources on investor relations, legal docs, and compliance for each new LP.

A tokenized private credit fund? It can serve thousands of investors. The compliance is programmatic. The onboarding is digital. The minimums are low enough that a completely new class of capital - retail, smaller family offices, crypto-native treasuries all can participate.

Product Design Flexibility

Tokenized issuance also unlocks a new dimension of product design. Because the asset is programmable, issuers can:

• Create multiple tranches with different risk/return profiles, all within a single smart contract

• Offer flexible redemption terms - daily, weekly, monthly - programmatically enforced

• Build dynamic yield mechanisms that adjust based on onchain data

• Structure hybrid products that blend fixed income with DeFi yield strategies

None of this is practical or standard in traditional issuance. The legal, operational, and administrative overhead would be prohibitive. With tokenization, the logic lives in the contract, and the cost of complexity drops dramatically.

** 3. The Institutional Thesis - Settlement, Transparency, and Structural De-Risking**

The Core Thesis

Institutions don't care about "crypto." They don't care about "decentralisation" as a philosophy. What they care about deeply, obsessively, is settlement risk, operational cost, reporting accuracy, and regulatory compliance.

Tokenization delivers measurable improvements on every single one of those dimensions. That's the thesis. And it's why the biggest names in finance are already here.

Settlement - The $2.4 Trillion Argument

The current financial system runs on T+2 settlement at best. That means when you trade a security, it takes two business days for the trade to actually settle. During that window:

• Counterparty risk is live. If the other side defaults before settlement, you're exposed.

• Capital is locked. You can't redeploy the funds until settlement clears.

• Operational complexity compounds. Reconciliation, margin calls, and collateral management all exist because settlement isn't instant.

Tokenization moves settlement to near real-time. T+0. Sometimes faster. That single change:

• Frees up capital that was previously locked in settlement limbo

• Eliminates counterparty risk during the settlement window

• Reduces the need for clearing houses, CCPs, and the entire post-trade infrastructure stack

The estimated total potential economic gain from this shift? Around $2.4 trillion per annum globally from increased efficiencies, with realistic near-term gains between $31B and $130B annually by 2030.

Who's Already Moving

• BlackRock launched BUIDL - a tokenized money market fund that crossed $1B in AUM

• Franklin Templeton put fund shares onchain via the BENJI platform

• JPMorgan built Onyx for tokenized repo and collateral management

• Goldman Sachs, HSBC, UBS, and Citi are all actively piloting or deploying tokenized asset infrastructure

They're not doing this because blockchain is exciting. They're doing it because it's cheaper, faster, and reduces risk.

||| The Builder Thesis - Picks and Shovels for a Multi-Trillion Dollar Market

Every major market transition has its infrastructure winners. The California Gold Rush had its pickaxe manufacturers. The internet had its server and router companies. Cloud computing had AWS. The tokenization of real-world assets has its own infrastructure stack being built right now and the companies getting it right will become the plumbing of a $11+ trillion market.

The Infrastructure Stack

The tokenization ecosystem requires an entirely new layer of financial infrastructure. Not all of it is glamorous, but all of it is essential:

Custody Providers

The link between the onchain token and the offchain asset has to be safeguarded. This isn't just "holding keys" - it's maintaining the legal and operational integrity of the connection between a digital token and a real-world asset. Qualified custody for tokenized assets is becoming one of the most critical roles in the ecosystem.

Compliance Layers

KYC/AML verification, investor accreditation checks, transfer restrictions, jurisdictional controls, all of this has to work seamlessly, programmatically, and across borders. The companies building compliant identity and verification infrastructure for tokenized assets are solving one of the hardest problems in the space.

Issuance Platforms

Making it easy and legally sound for anyone to tokenize an asset with proper structure, proper documentation, and proper onchain representation. The best issuance platforms abstract away the complexity and let issuers focus on their products.

Settlement and Clearing Infrastructure

The backend that makes instant settlement possible. This includes the bridge between onchain and offchain settlement systems, the cash leg of tokenized trades, and the integration with existing banking rails.

Oracles and Data Feeds

Connecting real-world data - Net Asset Values, interest rates, default events, property valuations, commodity prices - to onchain smart contracts. Without reliable oracles, tokenized assets can't maintain accurate pricing or trigger programmatic events. This is the connective tissue between the real world and the blockchain.

Legal and Structuring Services

The legal wrappers such as SPVs, trusts, fund structures that sit underneath tokenized assets. Without robust legal architecture, a token is just a number on a ledger with no enforceable claim. The firms getting the legal structuring right are as critical as the technology providers.

The Emerging Market Thesis - The Quiet Revolution That Changes Everything

This is the benefit that almost nobody in Western finance talks about. And it might be the most important one.

For billions of people in emerging markets, tokenization isn't a nicer version of finance. It's the first version of finance that actually works for them.

The Structural Problem

In many emerging markets, the financial system is characterised by:

• High inflation - Local currencies lose purchasing power rapidly (Argentina, Nigeria, Turkey, Lebanon)

• Limited banking access - Large portions of the population are unbanked or underbanked

• Capital controls - Governments restrict access to foreign currencies and international investment products

• Expensive remittances - Cross-border transfers take days and cost 5–10% in fees

• No access to global yield - Even when people can save, they're stuck in low-yield local instruments that barely keep pace with inflation

How Tokenization Changes This

Tokenized assets, combined with stablecoins, offer a fundamentally different proposition:

USD-Denominated Yield Without a US Bank Account

A person in Argentina can hold a tokenized US Treasury fund and earn yield in USD-pegged stablecoins. No US bank account. No wire transfers. No accreditation. Just a wallet and an internet connection. For someone living in a country where the local currency has lost 40% of its value in a year, this isn't a marginal improvement. It's a lifeline.

Stablecoins as a Savings Layer

In countries with high inflation, stablecoins, particularly USDC and USDT have become de facto savings instruments. People aren't using them to trade. They're using them to preserve purchasing power. Tokenized assets take this a step further by offering yield on those stable savings.

Global Investment Products

Before tokenization, a middle-class saver in Southeast Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa had effectively zero access to:

• US Treasuries

• Investment-grade corporate bonds

• Diversified private credit funds

• Real estate investment products

Tokenization makes all of these accessible, fractional, and available 24/7. The same products that institutional investors in New York use to manage their portfolios become available to a schoolteacher in Manila or an entrepreneur in Nairobi.

Instant, Low-Cost Transfers

Remittances - the lifeblood of many emerging economies currently cost between 5–10% in fees and take days to settle through traditional banking rails. Stablecoin and tokenized asset transfers settle in minutes for a fraction of the cost. For a market worth over $600B annually, this is a transformative shift.

Earned Wage Access

Payroll infrastructure that settles instantly onchain rather than through slow, expensive banking rails. Workers can access earned wages in real time, in stablecoins, without waiting for traditional payroll cycles.

The Scale of the Opportunity

There are roughly 1.4 billion unbanked adults globally. Billions more are underbanked, they have some access to financial services, but it's expensive, slow, and limited. Tokenization and stablecoins together represent the first realistic path to financial inclusion at scale that doesn't depend on building out traditional banking infrastructure.

For these populations, tokenization isn't about making finance slightly better. It's about making finance accessible at all.

The Full Picture - Who Benefits, How, and When

Retail investors - the thesis is access and composability. Fractional ownership, programmable capital, and global 24/7 access mean that markets gated by minimums, geography, and accreditation become open and usable.

Issuers - the thesis is capital access and efficiency. Smart contract distribution, a global investor base, and programmable products mean faster fundraising, wider reach, lower cost, and new product design possibilities.

Institutions - the thesis is settlement and structural de-risking. T+0 settlement, onchain transparency, and programmable compliance mean reduced counterparty risk, cleaner reporting, and lower operational cost.

Regulators - the thesis is real-time visibility and enforcement. Onchain audit trails, embedded compliance, and programmable restrictions take oversight from reactive and self-reported to real-time, embedded, and surgical.

Infrastructure builders - the thesis is picks and shovels. Custody, compliance, issuance, oracles, settlement, and legal structuring, they're building the default plumbing for a $11T+ market.

Emerging markets - the thesis is financial inclusion at scale. Stablecoins as savings, tokenized yield, instant transfers, and global access represent the first financial infrastructure that actually reaches billions of underserved people.

The Honest Caveat

None of this is automatic. Tokenization doesn't fix bad assets. It doesn't guarantee liquidity. It doesn't make risk disappear.

A tokenized bond can still default. A tokenized property can still lose value. A tokenized fund with a weak legal wrapper underneath it gives the holder nothing enforceable in court.

The benefits are real - every single thesis outlined above is backed by structural logic and real-world evidence. But they only materialise when the legal structure, the custody, the compliance, and the servicing are all done properly.

The token is the last mile. Everything underneath it is what actually matters.

If the legal wrapper is a shoddy SPV in an opaque jurisdiction with no recourse, the token is just a pretty receipt for nothing. If the oracle feeding the NAV is unreliable, the onchain price is fiction. If the issuer doesn't service the asset - collect rents, manage defaults, make distributions - the tokenized version is just as dead as the traditional version would be.

Tokenization is not magic. It's infrastructure. And infrastructure only works when it's built properly.

So Who Benefits Most?

Honestly? It depends on the timeframe.

Short Term - Institutions and Issuers Win First

They're the ones saving real money on settlement, compliance, and operational overhead right now. The cost savings are measurable and immediate. That's why represented RWAs dominate the current market - roughly $360B vs $27B in distributed assets. The institutional use case doesn't need retail adoption or secondary market liquidity to work. It just needs better plumbing. And tokenization is better plumbing.

Medium Term - Builders and Infrastructure Providers

As the market scales toward the projected $11 trillion by 2030, the picks-and-shovels companies become indispensable. Custody, compliance, oracles, issuance platforms - whoever becomes the default stack will capture enormous, recurring value. This is the AWS moment for financial infrastructure.

Long Term - Retail and Emerging Markets

As rails mature, compliance frameworks settle, secondary markets deepen, and user experiences improve, the access revolution becomes real for everyday people. This is when the full thesis plays out - when a person anywhere in the world can access, hold, and compose with any asset class, 24/7, from a phone.

The answer to "who benefits most?" isn't one party.

It's everyone, just not at the same time or for the same reasons.