Why Are Asset Managers Missing the RWA Tokenization Shift?

Most mid-market and private-markets managers can already tell you what RWA tokenization is. Almost none of them have issued anything, and that gap is the interesting part.
Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization issues and administers ownership of a physical or financial asset, such as a fund interest, private credit position, or real estate stake, as a digitally native security on programmable infrastructure.
For a manager, this is not another asset class to add to the book. It is a new operating layer sitting beneath the assets you already run, taking over the subscription, transfer, cap-table, and reporting work that today moves on spreadsheets, PDFs, and manual reconciliation. For the underlying mechanics, see how security tokens differ from utility tokens.

The rails are no longer experimental. Boston Consulting Group and ADDX projected in a 2022 report that tokenized illiquid assets could reach roughly $16 trillion by 2030. That number is contested, and worth treating with care: McKinsey's 2024 base case puts tokenized financial assets under $2 trillion by the same year. The figure that matters more is what is already live. Roughly $38 billion of real-world assets sit on-chain today excluding stablecoins, per the rwa.xyz tracker, around four times the early-2025 level. Even at the conservative end, the institutions building this infrastructure are now some of the most conservative names in finance. Yet the typical response from a mid-market manager is to watch and wait. The distance between what these firms already understand and what they have actually built is where the next few years get decided.

As shown in the graphic, the curve starts near zero in 2022, sits near 4 trillion dollars by mid-2026, and runs toward roughly 16 trillion by 2030. That is early on the climb, which is why most managers are still watching.

Does tokenization change how the asset works, or just how it looks?

Tokenization changes the unit economics of servicing investors. When a fund interest or private placement is issued as a digital security, the subscription, whitelist, transfer, and distribution logic runs on the infrastructure instead of being administered by hand.

Settlement is the most visible shift. Ownership updates on-chain rather than passing through a chain of intermediaries, so a transfer that once took days can close the same day. Positions also become fractional and transferable inside a compliant perimeter, which widens the investable base without anyone rewriting the fund structure. And the cost of servicing each additional investor stops climbing with headcount, because onboarding and reporting are automated once rather than rebuilt per deal.

For a manager running co-investments or a growing base of private clients, that last point is the whole argument. Either the operation scales on infrastructure, or it scales on people you have to hire. Moving real-world assets on-chain turns investor operations from a recurring cost into reusable private markets infrastructure that every subsequent deal can run on.

Which RWA tokenization use cases benefit most?

The gains concentrate in illiquid assets, which is where managers hold the most value and have the least room to move. These positions are hard to transfer, expensive to service, and effectively frozen between liquidity events. The classes that gain the most:

• Private equity stakes. Long lock-ups and manual transfer processes leave LPs with no exit between distributions. A tokenized private equity stake can change hands inside a compliant perimeter without waiting for a liquidity event, and cap-table updates settle automatically instead of through paperwork.

• Private credit. Loan positions are handled deal by deal, with interest and repayment tracking that rarely scales. Tokenized private credit standardizes that servicing layer and makes partial sale or collateralization possible without restructuring the facility.

• Real estate. High ticket sizes lock out all but the largest investors. Fractional, transferable ownership of tokenized real estate within a regulated framework widens the base without fragmenting legal title.

• Infrastructure. Multi-decade hold periods make these among the most illiquid positions a manager runs. Tokenized units give investors a way to rebalance long before the asset matures.

One caveat worth stating plainly: tokenization does not manufacture liquidity. A tokenized position can be transferred, collateralized, or partially sold within a compliant framework without unwinding the underlying vehicle, but that still depends on a matched investor base or a secondary venue. It will not turn a ten-year fund into a daily-liquid product. What it does is create optionality where there was none.

The economics also improve at the firm level. A manager who standardizes issuance and servicing across an SPV structure stops rebuilding the same operational plumbing for every vehicle, so the cost of the tenth issuance looks nothing like the cost of the first.

Are JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Hamilton Lane already ahead on RWA tokenization?

Yes, and that is the clearest signal it has left the pilot stage. The largest and most conservative institutions now run tokenization in production, not in a lab.

These are large-institution proofs that both the rails and the regulatory path hold up. A mid-market manager is not competing with a custody bank's balance sheet. The real opening is more practical: run the same infrastructure at your own scale before the firms down the road do.

Is regulation really what's holding European managers back?

No. For European managers the binding constraint is operational readiness, not regulation and not technology. The EU regulatory framework already exists; the rules are in place, they are just widely misread. What trips firms up is treating three separate regimes as one:

• eWpG (Gesetz über elektronische Wertpapiere): In Germany, instruments that qualify as securities - bonds, and, since 2022, regulated fund units under the KAGB - can be issued as electronic or crypto securities under the eWpG. Instruments that are not securities, including many private-equity, private-credit or real-estate interests, fall under other regimes such as the VermAnlG, so the applicable framework depends on how each instrument is structured.

• MiCA: A separate regime for crypto-assets that are not financial instruments. Provided a token qualifies as a financial instrument, MiCA does not apply to it.

• ECSPR: A passportable EU framework for investment- and lending-based crowdfunding, capped at €5m per issuer over 12 months.

Blur these together and you generate uncertainty the rules never actually create. Taken on their own terms, all three are usable today.

The real obstacle sits inside the firm. Tokenization touches fund administration, compliance, custody, and investor relations at the same time, and few firms want to own that as a technology project. So this is where the European market splits. The managers who win are not the ones who build the deepest in-house stack - they are the ones who adopt compliant infrastructure and put their own attention back on origination and investor relationships. Framing tokenization as an IT build is what keeps otherwise-ready managers on the sidelines.

How can an asset manager tokenize a fund under EU regulation?

Faster than most expect, provided you treat it as an operating-layer upgrade rather than a research programme. Four steps.

Choose infrastructure, don't build it. Start from managed tokenization infrastructure that already carries the compliance, custody, and reporting logic. Committing to an in-house engineering build is the slow road, and it rarely pays back.

Tokenize one contained vehicle first. Run a single SPV or fund interest end to end before you standardize across the book. A first live issuance proves the model without betting the operation on it.

Make the build-versus-buy call on purpose. Building in-house means owning smart-contract security, regulatory mapping, and investor onboarding as a permanent commitment. Adopting white-label infrastructure keeps the client relationship and brand with you while the issuance and servicing layer is maintained for you. For a firm serving a growing private-client base, buying almost always wins, because the scarce resource is management attention, not capital.

Move from watching to building. Put your firm on a three-stage readiness model:

• Watching - tracking the market, no live capability.

• Building - running a first tokenized vehicle on adopted infrastructure.

• Standardizing - every new deal issued on reusable rails.

Most managers are still at Watching while the market moves past them. Reaching Building before your peers is the advantage worth chasing.

The technology is proven, the EU regime is usable, and the largest institutions have already committed. What's left is a question of who moves first.

To pressure-test a first tokenized vehicle, read next how ONINO compares with other tokenization platforms.

This article is for general information only. It does not constitute legal, tax, financial or investment advice. The regulatory frameworks referenced (eWpG, MiCA, ECSPR, MiFID II, PRIIPs, the EU Listing Act) evolve, and positions are stated as of the review date; confirm any specific transaction with a qualified adviser.