RWA has a liquidity problem, not a tokenization problem.
We’ve become increasingly good at putting real-world assets on-chain.
Treasuries. Private credit. Funds. Real estate. Commodities. But tokenizing an asset and creating a liquid market for it are two very different things. Tokenization ≠ Liquidity. You can represent a $10 million asset on-chain. You can fractionalize it into thousands of tokens.
You can make ownership and settlement more efficient.
But when an investor wants to sell:
Who is on the other side of the trade?
That is where the real challenge begins.
For RWA markets to develop further, I believe we need to pay more attention to the infrastructure surrounding the token:
→ Sufficient buyers and sellers → Compliant secondary-market access → Reliable issuance and redemption → Stablecoin and fiat settlement rails → Market makers and liquidity providers → Custody and transfer infrastructure → Clear legal rights to the underlying asset
And liquidity needs to be considered under stress—not only when markets are functioning normally.
This is also why TVL or tokenized asset value should not automatically be interpreted as available liquidity.
A $100 million tokenized asset does not necessarily mean $100 million can be sold immediately without meaningful price impact.
Different RWA structures will naturally have different liquidity characteristics. A tokenized Treasury product should not be evaluated in exactly the same way as tokenized private credit or real estate. So perhaps the next stage of RWA isn't simply: “What else can we tokenize?” It is: “How do we build functioning markets around what we've already tokenized?” Issuance brought assets on-chain.
Liquidity may determine whether they can stay there at scale.