Tokenization’s Next Phase Hinges on Liquidity, Not Just Issuance
The tokenization of real-world assets has moved past the proof-of-concept stage, but the industry’s next growth phase will be defined less by how many assets get wrapped on-chain and more by how useful and liquid those tokens actually become. That was the central argument from Anna Liu, CEO of HashKey’s RWA unit, who said longer trading hours, more efficient settlement, and richer asset-use cases are the dimensions investors should watch next.
Her framing cuts against the prevailing narrative that tokenization’s value lies primarily in broadening access to assets. Access alone, she suggests, does not attract incremental capital — capital efficiency does.
Why the Issuance Boom Isn’t Enough
Over the past two years, tokenized treasuries, money-market funds, private credit, and commodities have proliferated. Yet a large share of these tokens sit in wallets with limited secondary trading, thin order books, and few ways to be reused as collateral. In traditional markets, the same underlying assets support repo, margin lending, and derivatives activity around the clock. On-chain, that loop is often broken by fragmented venues, inconsistent legal treatment, and settlement frictions.
- Trading hours: Crypto markets run 24/7, but most tokenized RWAs still reference TradFi market hours, creating dead zones where pricing and hedging stall.
- Settlement efficiency: Near-instant settlement is a core blockchain promise, yet many RWA structures reintroduce T+1 or T+2 delays through custodians and transfer agents.
- Composability: Tokens that cannot be pledged, lent, or used in DeFi strategies are functionally inert, no matter how credible the issuer.
The Capital Efficiency Argument
Liu’s emphasis on capital efficiency reflects a broader shift in how institutional participants evaluate tokenized products. A tokenized Treasury that simply mirrors a fund share offers marginal benefit. A tokenized Treasury that can be posted as margin, lent against, or swapped instantly across venues offers something TradFi cannot easily replicate — and that is where new money is more likely to enter.
This has implications for issuers, exchanges, and DeFi protocols alike. Exchanges that list RWA tokens need deeper market-making commitments. Protocols that accept them as collateral need robust oracle and risk frameworks. Custodians and transfer agents need to compress settlement cycles rather than replicate legacy ones.
What to Watch Next
The next competitive frontier will likely be infrastructure that stitches tokenized assets into always-on markets: unified collateral systems, cross-venue settlement layers, and legal wrappers that let the same token serve multiple functions without tripping regulatory wires. Projects that solve for liquidity and reuse, rather than issuance volume, are the ones most likely to capture the next wave of institutional capital.
Tokenization’s first chapter was about proving assets could exist on-chain. The second chapter, as Liu frames it, is about making them work as hard as the capital behind them.
