RWA’s Value Without DeFi: A Nuanced View

The piece reframes the RWA debate away from issuance volume and toward the secondary-market plumbing that determines whether tokenized assets can actually be used, not just held. That distinction matters most for issuers and platforms marketing tokenization as a standalone breakthrough, since the argument implies their value proposition depends on infrastructure they often do not control. Whether DeFi's liquidity and leverage mechanisms are treated as a prerequisite or an optional layer is the open question, and it shapes how RWA adoption gets measured.