At this week’s series of Web3 events in Hong Kong, industry leaders are highlighting real world asset (RWA) tokenization as a pivotal evolution in blockchain’s journey toward mainstream adoption.

“This is the perfect time for our whole industry,” said Shukyee Ma, Chief Strategy Officer of Plume, during an exclusive interview. “After last year’s disappointment with DeFi yields, users are looking for something new, and we have the tokenized assets ready.”

Read more: The Impact of Real World Asset (RWA) Tokenization

Purpose-Built Blockchains Leading the Way

A key trend emerging from the discussions is the development of purpose-built blockchains specifically designed for RWAs, rather than using existing general-purpose chains.

“All those public chains are not built for RWA protocols,” explained Ma. “That’s why we build this RWA chain and put DeFi composability on top of it to make it easier for crypto users to adopt.”

“Over the next 10 years we’re going to see a lot of existing fungible assets coming on chain—US treasuries, sovereign bonds, equities,” predicted Jayant Ramanand, Co-founder of MANTRA. “As these assets come on chain, you’ll have fungible, movable value that can be transferred across the world instantly.”

Regulatory Challenges and Opportunities

Industry professionals identified regulatory certainty as vital for widespread adoption.

“In order to further unlock the potential of this technology and encourage traditional finance to adopt it, we issued circulars to provide guidance,” said Elizabeth Wong, Director of Fintech at Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission. “We maintained it to be agnostic to the technology used, as each blockchain has their benefits and limitations.”

Vivian Mei, a lawyer specializing in RWA compliance, observed that global regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly aligned: “The overall regulatory landscape is moving toward high convergence in terms of virtual asset definitions, KYC requirements, and compliance standards.”

George Chou, Chief Fintech Officer at Hong Kong Monetary Authority, highlighted their Project Ensemble initiative: “We want to explore an innovative market infrastructure with the industry to facilitate settlement using tokenized money, and identify impactful domestic and cross-border use cases with leading experts and industry pioneers.”

Bridging Traditional Finance with Crypto

“It’s not just simply bringing offline assets on-chain. It’s providing a structural change in how the real world and virtual world connect,” said JJ from The PAC, whose platform recently tokenized a quantitative fund with approximately $100 million in assets.

While financial assets will lead early adoption, Rachel Keum, CEO of VaultX, offers a different approach with her platform tokenizing art assets using NFC technology: “Our mission is to revolutionize RWA ownership by empowering digital-illiterate creators and collectors to unlock new value in the digital economy.” She explained that VaultX had already launched partnerships with galleries across Asia and Europe, creating a decentralized marketplace for artists to receive ongoing royalties from secondary sales.

Consumer-focused applications are also emerging. “The real distribution is never for institutional investors—it’s for the people,” said EudemoniaCC from Morph, whose Black Card quickly gained popularity. “We’re trying to put payment and consumption at the center, letting people spend their crypto assets in the real world while bringing new audiences into the ecosystem.”