The Real Situation and Development Trends of the RWA Industry

The Actual Scale of the RWA Field

According to the latest data, as of December 1, the total scale of strictly defined RWA assets, excluding stablecoins, has reached 13.55 billion USD. This figure includes asset classes such as private credit, U.S. Treasury bonds, commodities, institutional alternative funds, non-U.S. bonds, corporate bonds, and equities.

At the same time, the asset scale of stablecoin projects reached 192.78 billion US dollars.

There are views that, considering that the underlying assets of mainstream stablecoins like USDT and USDC are about 90% short-term U.S. Treasury securities, and that a considerable proportion of the underlying assets of certain decentralized stablecoins are also short-term U.S. Treasury securities, these should also be included in the category of RWA. According to this broader definition, the total asset size in the RWA sector could reach $206.33 billion, already achieving 20% of the trillion-dollar target.

Changes in the Distribution of RWA Assets

In the past two years, the RWA market landscape has undergone significant changes. Early on, U.S. Treasury tokenization dominated, but now the private credit sector has emerged strongly. A private credit platform rapidly expanded its business scale after securing $60 million in Series A funding from a large investment institution, pushing the total scale of private credit to $9.4 billion, far exceeding the $2.6 billion of U.S. Treasury tokenization.

Trends in RWA Asset Issuance in 2024

Data shows that the top three sectors for monthly RWA asset issuance in 2024 are stablecoins, tokenized US Treasuries, and private credit. This trend indicates that these three sub-sectors may be the most promising investment directions in the RWA industry.

Blockchain Distribution of RWA Assets

Ethereum remains in the top position with a market share of 76.51%. A certain cross-chain platform ranks second with 9 RWA products and a total scale of $245.58 million. Polygon ranks third due to its native stablecoin assets and tokenized products of U.S. Treasury bonds issued by well-known asset management companies. Solana primarily relies on stablecoins and assets issued by a certain platform to support its fourth position. Although Avalanche performs actively in the RWA field, its overall development is limited, with a total scale of only $97.87 million.

Investment Opportunities in the RWA Sector

Investors can focus on the following two types of targets:

1. Leading enterprises: including leading projects in the tokenization of U.S. debt, emerging platforms in the private credit sector, representative enterprises in non-U.S. debt tokenization and institutional funds, etc.

2. Potential stocks: Projects such as issuing decentralized stablecoins based on tokenized U.S. Treasuries in collaboration with large asset management companies, RWA stablecoin pricing markets, and private credit platforms that are recovering growth, etc.

When investors choose potential stocks, they should focus on projects that possess the ability for "disruptive innovation" or demonstrate the potential for "exponential growth."