The RWA War: Stablecoins, Speed, and Control
Consensus Hong Kong 2026 was, by many accounts, an RWA conference that occurred to be about crypto. Across principal levels, facet occasions, and sponsored panels, real-world asset tokenization dominated the dialog — however not in the best way it did a yr in the past.
The pitch decks have given strategy to real disagreements about structure, regulation, and what tokenization truly solves. Here’s what’s truly being argued.
Stablecoins Are RWA — and Everyone Now Agrees
One of the clearest factors of consensus was that probably the most profitable RWA already exists. “The most profitable RWA is USDT,” mentioned CJ Fong, Managing Director and Head of APAC and EMEA Sales at GSR, throughout a panel on the principal convention.
At the Gate’s facet occasion, Chunda McCain, co-founder of Paxos Labs, described surging demand for PAXG, the agency’s gold-backed token, as proof that stablecoins are increasing past greenback pegs into commodities and treasuries. Paxos secured its OCC conditional license in December and holds regulatory approvals in Singapore, Finland, and Abu Dhabi — a multi-jurisdictional technique constructed across the assumption that stablecoins and tokenized property are converging.
Brian Mehler, CEO of cost blockchain Stable, strengthened the purpose from the infrastructure facet. His firm’s USDT Zero system eliminates gasoline charges fully — ship 100 USDT, and 99.999 USDT arrives. At the Stablecoin Odyssey facet occasion, Mehler in contrast the objective to Swift: the consumer shouldn’t know they’re on a blockchain.
The implication is that the stablecoin-RWA boundary is more and more synthetic. As stablecoins again themselves with T-bills, gold, and structured merchandise, and as RWA platforms settle in USDC, the 2 classes are merging right into a single tokenized finance layer.
The Architecture War: Permissioned vs Permissionless
The sharpest disagreement on the convention got here from two corporations that nominally do the identical factor.
At the Consensus mainstage session “Tokenizing the Planet,” Graham Ferguson, Head of Ecosystem at Securitize, and Min Lin, Managing Director of Global Expansion at Ondo, laid out basically totally different visions.
Securitize advocates for native token issuance under a permissioned framework. Ferguson argued that wrapper fashions — the place an present off-chain asset is wrapped into an on-chain token — create distance between the underlying asset and the investor, weakening safety. With BlackRock’s BUIDL fund surpassing $1 billion in AUM, he pointed to the observe document of issuing securities immediately on-chain with compliance inbuilt.
Ondo takes the other path: permissionless wrappers that prioritize DeFi composability and world distribution. Min Lin argued that the mannequin integrates extra shortly with present DeFi protocols and removes gatekeepers, a bonus significantly related for reaching traders throughout Asia. The firm is actively increasing into Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.
In a follow-up interview with BeInCrypto, Ferguson questioned whether or not wrapper fashions can present enough investor safety. He additionally detailed Securitize’s plans to develop DeFi partnerships whereas sustaining its permissioned structure.
The binary might already be outdated, although. At Stablecoin Odyssey’s RWA panel, Conflux CSO Forgiven described a reside hybrid case: renewable vitality property packaged by a monetary firm and wrapped right into a DeFi protocol. It’s a permissionless distribution of a regulated, real-world asset — a construction that doesn’t match neatly into both camp.
Settlement Speed: The Argument That Keeps Winning
If one declare was repeated most throughout venues, it was that tokenization’s killer characteristic isn’t entry or transparency — it’s velocity.
Conflux’s Forgiven supplied probably the most concrete benchmark: deposit USDC, obtain speedy affirmation; request redemption, get USDC again inside one hour. “Faster than T+0,” he famous, towards conventional settlement cycles that may stretch to days.
The composability argument extends this additional. Multiple panelists throughout periods famous a limitation in conventional finance. Buying an asset and utilizing it as collateral instantly is structurally unattainable. On-chain, it’s native performance.
Stable’s Mehler highlighted a sensible ache level that bridges principle and actuality: through the latest market selloff, ETH gasoline worth volatility doubled transaction prices for companies transferring stablecoins. His fixed-cost USDT switch mannequin eliminates that variable, which issues when enterprises are processing 1000’s of transactions day by day.
Physical Assets: Where the Narrative Meets Friction
The treasured metals session at HashKey Cloud’s occasion offered a actuality examine. Ronald Tan, Director of Silver Times Limited, walked by the logistics of the silver market: warehouse prices, transportation challenges, and US-China export restrictions that don’t vanish when a token is minted.
This is the hole between monetary RWA and bodily RWA. Treasuries and fund shares can settle immediately as a result of the underlying asset is already recorded within the ledger. Metals, vitality, and actual property require verification that the bodily asset exists and is correctly custodied.
Paxos’s PAXG expertise — gold tokens backed by allotted bars in London vaults — reveals it may work at scale, however McCain acknowledged the corporate is committing extra sources to satisfy surging demand. The infrastructure for physical-asset tokenization is actual, however removed from trivial.
Asia because the Center of Gravity
Across all periods, Asia — and Hong Kong particularly — emerged because the gravitational middle of the RWA narrative.
Ondo is focusing on Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan for growth. Securitize’s Ferguson instructed BeInCrypto that the corporate would prioritize jurisdictions with regulatory readability, naming the identical cities. Paxos already holds a Singapore MAS license. HashKey, as each an occasion host and a market participant, anchored a number of panels on Hong Kong’s positioning.
Forgiven of Conflux described its firm as a uncommon Chinese blockchain venture utilizing actual names. Its renewable vitality RWA product was designed particularly for the Hong Kong market.
The subtext is evident: whereas US regulatory battles over stablecoin laws and the Clarity Act proceed — some extent Anthony Scaramucci made forcefully in his personal Consensus look — Asia is constructing the infrastructure and establishing the precedents.
What’s Actually at Stake
The RWA dialog at Consensus Hong Kong revealed an trade that has moved previous the query of whether or not tokenization will occur. The arguments now middle on how—permissioned or permissionless, monetary or bodily, institutional or retail-first—and the solutions are diverging by asset class, jurisdiction, and enterprise mannequin.
The stablecoin-RWA convergence might show to be probably the most consequential shift. If probably the most profitable tokenized property are stablecoins, and stablecoins are more and more backed by real-world property, your entire framing of RWA as a separate sector might not survive 2026.
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