Asian Web3 research firm Tiger Research is urging financial institutions to pursue real-world asset (RWA) tokenization in overseas markets rather than wait for domestic regulatory clarity, in a report titled Start RWA Tokenization Abroad First. The advisory comes as the global RWA market swelled to $25–36 billion in the first half of 2026, demonstrating clear operational efficiencies such as automated interest payments and drastically shorter settlement periods.
Despite this growth, a widespread regulatory vacuum remains a major barrier. Tiger Research points to the lack of legal validity for distributed ledger records and insufficient investor protection frameworks as key uncertainties preventing traditional firms from entering the space at scale. The report recommends two strategic pathways: entering regulated jurisdictions like Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States, or leveraging on-chain native platforms such as Ondo (ONDO) and Plume (PLUME). Major U.S. financial firms are already building proprietary platforms and gaining direct experience on networks including Canton (CC), Solana (SOL), and Ethereum (ETH).
Meanwhile, Falcon Finance’s Chief RWA Officer, Artem Tolkachev, emphasized in a Stabledash Live appearance that tokenization alone is insufficient—assets must function as collateral to unlock liquidity and capital efficiency. Falcon’s universal collateralization layer accepts stablecoins, Bitcoin, ETH, and tokenized RWAs to mint its synthetic dollar USDf, which has surpassed $1.3 billion in circulation. A separate regulated stablecoin, fUSD, is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank under OCC supervision for centralized venues. Tolkachev highlighted that while Bitcoin’s market cap fell 33% over 18 months, tokenized RWAs rose 480%, signaling that the next phase of the market will be defined by utility, collateralization, and institutional flow.
