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Wall Street’s RWA bet could break on crypto infrastructure

by admin September 28, 2025

Disclosure: The views and opinions expressed here belong solely to the author and do not represent the views and opinions of crypto.news’ editorial.

Real-world asset tokenization has surged to $27 billion, making it the fastest-growing corner of crypto. But while headlines boast about trillion-dollar potential, most platforms still fall short of the institutional standards needed to unlock real capital. The next phase of tokenization isn’t about hype — it’s about building rails institutions can actually trust.

Summary

RWA tokenization grew 118% YoY to $27B, led by BlackRock’s $1.7B BUIDL fund.
Institutions like Franklin Templeton and KKR are testing tokenization, but major allocators remain cautious.
Current gaps include asset commingling, weak auditability, and a lack of regulated custody and insurance.
To attract trillions in institutional capital, platforms must embed compliance, real-time audits, and ironclad custodial safeguards from day one.

Real-world asset tokenization is now the fastest-growing segment in crypto, clocking in at $27 billion, a 118% year-over-year surge. In the past year alone, BlackRock’s BUIDL fund crossed $1.7 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries, while institutional players like Franklin Templeton, Apollo, and KKR are rushing to tokenize everything from private credit to real estate on-chain.

The institutional growth has arrived, and now the challenge is clear: RWA platforms must build infrastructure that meets the unique standards of institutional capital if this gold rush is to deliver on its potential for investors and markets alike. When trillions in institutional assets start migrating onto blockchains, the quality of the rails matters for everyone.

As more players rush in, the gap between what is being built and what is actually needed deepens, growing more dangerous. With more at stake than ever, it’s time for platforms to focus on embedding the controls, transparency, and reliability that institutional capital requires. Only by adopting these standards can RWA tokenization deliver lasting benefits for end investors, borrowers, and overall financial stability, unlocking institutional capital at the scale needed to drive this trillion-dollar market. Forward-looking RWA platforms, however, recognize that serving institutions means evolving beyond early crypto playbooks. The next phase is about building the features needed to welcome and safeguard major capital.

The institutional standard: Where RWA infrastructure still falls short

In financial services, there are certain standards that are baseline; for example, client assets must be kept in legally distinct accounts. Meaning that if a custodian fails, the assets are recoverable and protected by regulations that have been used for decades.

On-chain, many RWA platforms still rely on pooled or omnibus wallets, a shortcut that blurs the line between client holdings and platform funds. This approach introduces a systemic risk: if a protocol is compromised, client assets may be mixed in ways that make legal recovery or restitution highly uncertain. On-chain, where such protections are usually absent, commingling turns a technical breach into a potential operational and legal nightmare.

Just as critical is auditability. Blockchain may promise transparency, but for institutional players, visibility without audit‑ready oversight is meaningless, and most RWA platforms still fall short.

It’s no surprise that many traditional hedge fund managers remain hesitant to crypto exposure, due to concerns over auditability and reporting standards, with 76% of those not currently invested in digital assets unlikely to enter the space within the next three years, up from 54% in 2023. Failing to meet these rigorous standards means locking out the very institutional capital poised to transform this market.

If RWA tokenization delivers on its promise, the industry can no longer settle for shortcuts. Infrastructure built for institutions means inherited safeguards, not just innovation. These safeguards include meticulous asset segregation, real-time auditability, and ironclad regulatory compliance, the same protections that have underpinned traditional finance for decades. Without them, institutional allocators will simply not move. This shift is what is needed if the next wave of capital is to be both substantial and sustainable.

Custody and compliance struggles

Behind every major allocation of institutional capital sits a base of regulated custody and insurance. Pension funds and sovereign wealth managers are not going to entrust billions to a browser extension wallet. Instead, institutions expect highly certified custodians (SOC2 or ISO) who provide both regulatory protection and robust insurance protecting clients in case of loss.

In short, while custody infrastructure is steadily improving, and leading providers are showing what’s possible, the broader market still has a way to go. Elevating these standards industry-wide is essential. Without insured, regulated custody at scale, even the most innovative platforms may find doors to major institutional capital remain firmly shut.

The same gap shows up in compliance. DeFi’s promise of permissionless access was once its boldest selling point. This same promise is ringing alarm bells for institutional allocators. Without built-in KYC, AML controls, and whitelisted investor pools, institutional allocators cannot participate — the risk profile is simply untenable. Expanding these frameworks will be key to unlocking broader institutional engagement going forward.

Until RWA platforms give regulated custody, insurance, and compliance the same priority as technical innovation, the sector will be stuck on the sidelines of true institutional finance. For tokenization to scale safely, these core systems must be foundational, or the promise of bringing real-world assets on-chain will not become a market reality.

The rift between headlines and reality

Even as the RWA tokenization market now exceeds $27 billion, the vast majority is held by crypto-native investors, hedge funds, and stablecoin issuers, not by the banks, insurers, or pension funds that move true institutional capital. Among the Fortune 100, only a handful have run tokenization pilots, and even fewer have allocated real balance sheet capital.

While some platforms have ticked off compliance boxes, earned accredited certifications, and landed custody partnerships, most of the industry still faces stiff regulatory scrutiny in the United States. As of today, the SEC continues to press for deeper disclosures, stronger investor protections, and clearer legal structures before it greenlights RWA tokenization for broad investment.

The real test is just beginning

Crypto is now at the same crossroads. The next wave of institutional capital will flow to platforms designed from day one with transparency, real-time auditability, segregated and insured custody, and with compliance woven into every layer. However, these platforms are still the exception, not the rule, at a time when the sector desperately needs robust, institution-ready rails. The few platforms taking a compliance-first approach, embedding safeguards and institution-ready custody from the outset, are the ones best positioned to meet Wall Street’s bar.

And as capital pours in, it’s only getting more selective. Institutional allocators will not move billions onto rails they cannot trust. The next leaders in RWA tokenization will be the ones embedding compliance, auditability, and custodial safeguards into their architecture from day one.

Abdul Rafay Gadit

Abdul Rafay Gadit is the Co-Founder of ZIGChain, a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain protocol created to provide the core infrastructure for real-world financial applications. At ZIGChain, Rafay oversees the development of foundational blockchain components, including the Wealth Management Engine and a $100 million ecosystem fund that supports builders and institutions bringing traditional financial products on-chain. In addition to his role at ZIGChain, Rafay is also the Co-Founder and Chief Financial Officer of Zignaly, a leading Web3-native investment platform that connects everyday investors with top-performing fund managers through blockchain-powered profit sharing.

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September 28, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Creators of Reigns, Streets of Rage and Saturnalia launch Palestinian Voices in Gaming to support indies from Gaza and the West Bank

by admin September 19, 2025

A group of game industry folks including Reigns studio Nerial, Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione and Streets Of Rage 4 outfit Lizardcube have launched Palestinian Voices in Gaming, an international volunteer network to support current and emerging independent Palestinian developers.

First convened in May 2024, the network are currently looking to connect Palestinian game devs with volunteers and funding partners. They’ll provide administrative help to any developer trying to get access to funding, and assistance managing resources and volunteer contributions, once secured. They aim to follow and boost each project from “production to announcement to publication”, and are already working with a range of smaller independent games, many of which explore recollections of pain and loss through speculative fiction and fantasy.

Dreams on a Pillow | Image credit: Rasheed Abu-Eideh

As you might expect, the network is a response to Israel’s on-going mass killing and dispossession of Palestinians in Gaza, which has now formally been defined as a genocide by a UN inquiry, together with the long-term killing, oppression and mistreatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and inside Israel’s own borders.

“The dehumanisation of Palestinians is tied to their rare visibility in the cultural sphere,” the organisers note on their website. “This dehumanisation costs lives – as the world remains indifferent to the ongoing genocide in Gaza and to the surge of violent oppression across the West Bank and inside Israel.

“We want to push against the dehumanisation of Palestinians, not simply through representation but also through professional and economic support, so that Palestinian game developers may tell their own stories and reach global audiences.”

Being 2 | Image credit: Iasmin Omar Ata / Delta

Among the Palestinian game developers PVG are working with is Iasmin Omar Ata, whose forthcoming sci-fi adventure novel Being 2 is set in a Palestinian space colony. “You would have to fix the space colony during a black out, which would lead to flashbacks/hallucinations allowing to see past memories of Palestine,” reads a summary from the developer’s portfolio.

Another partner developer, Yusra, is working on RiYafa (pictured in this article’s header), an underwater experience “that combines testimony and symbolism to tell the story of her family and community based in the West Bank”, in the words of a press release.

Yasmine Batniji’s Pomegranates is also set in the future. “Travel to the year 2048 and play as a memory keeper in the reclaimed and rebuilt Gaza City,” reads the summary. “You will be tasked with tracing echoes of the current war at the renovated Al-Ahli hospital.” You can find a version of it on Itch.io.

Image credit: Yasmine Batniji / Gabbah Baya

Lastly, there’s Rasheed Abueideh, creator of Liyla and the Shadows of War and the forthcoming Dreams on a Pillow. Nic interviewed Abueideh about the latter game last year – amongst other things, they discussed the absence of support structures for Palestinian game developers in the occupied West Bank. “You need to experiment many things, and you have to make many iterations to reach something that is beautiful and people can actually enjoy,” Abueideh told Nic. “And to do this, you need an ecosystem that helps you.”

If you’d like to apply for support from the network, you can do so via this form. If you’d like to sign up as a volunteer, you can do so here.

The games industry at large has a… complicated relationship with Palestine. While many large publishers halted game sales in Russia following the outbreak of a murderous invasion of Ukraine, there hasn’t been a similar wave of divestment from Israel, even given some well-supported accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

In particular, Microsoft and Xbox are the subject of a boycott in response to their alleged collaborations with the Israeli military to surveil and target Palestinians using cloud technology and generative AI. Nic and I recently interviewed a number of people participating in the boycott, amongst them a former Microsoft developer who called attention to Microsoft’s “double standard” toward internal discussion of Israel and Palestine. Microsoft declined to comment on this allegation when approached by RPS.

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September 19, 2025 0 comments

GameFi Guides

FBS Sees Ethereum Being Positioned as Wall Street’s Base Layer

by admin September 11, 2025

FBS, a global brokerage firm licensed in multiple jurisdictions, has highlighted Ethereum’s (ETH) evaluation from merely being a speculative cryptocurrency to the foundational infrastructure for traditional finance.

As per the official release, FBS acknowledged Ethereum’s growing role as a financial backbone for Wall Street. Further indicating Billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s backing of ETH-focused treasuries is acting as a strong signal that institutional capital is now viewing Ethereum as core Financial infrastructure.

Thiel’s Founders Fund owns 7.5% of ETHzilla, a biotech company turned Ethereum treasury, and 9.1% of BitMine Immersion Technologies, another firm that has adopted an Ethereum treasury strategy, and also he leads several investors into Ether (ETH).

FBS, also stated that Ethereum’s staking economy has played a key role in accelerating its transformation with more than $170 billion worth of ETH staked. The assets are comparable to bonds with annual yields of 3-4% making it increasingly attractive for pension funds, corporate treasuries and institutional investors seeking stable income streams.

The experts acknowledged Ethereum’s layer 2 networks namely Arbitrum, Optimism, and Coinbase’s Base, which process about 12-14 million daily, therefore surpassing Ethereum’s own mainnet. The achievements have put Ethereum in a position to be tokenized of real-world assets (RWA) where it already has projects backed by big institutions like JPMorgan, Black rock and Citigroup.

Currently, the already known tokens that will benefit from this institutional shift include, Arbitrum (ARB), Chainlink (LINK), and Lido (LDO). Also, the analysis noted that ETH spots ETFs which were launched in 2024, have managed to attract $30 billion in assets under management. Beyond the ETF, the tokenization market already worth $24 billion is expected to expand rapidly.

With Ethereum’s expansion, scaling solutions and tokenization, it is in a great position to become Wall Street’s base layer.

Also Read: Hong Kong Arrest 2 Over Alleged Electricity Theft for Bitcoin Mining

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September 11, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Wall Street’s Needs Will Advance Ethereum’s Privacy, Says Etherealize

by admin September 6, 2025

In brief

Wall Street will advance privacy on Ethereum, according to Danny Ryan.
Etherealize is building infrastructure for trading and settling tokenized equities.
The company plans on leveraging zero-knowledge proofs.

Privacy advocates should be cheering on Wall Street’s adoption of cryptocurrencies, according to Etherealize co-founder and President Danny Ryan.

As markets move on-chain, financial institutions are expressing a need for infrastructure that echoes elements of traditional markets, and privacy is “table stakes,” he told Decrypt.

“The market does not, and cannot, function fully in the clear,” he said. “If we’re going to onboard the world to blockchains, ‘everyone sees everything all the time’ is just not going to work.”

On Wednesday, Etherealize unveiled the closing of a $40 million funding round. The startup said it will promote Ethereum’s use by developing infrastructure for the trading and settling tokenized assets that’s based around zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, among other tools.

When transacting on a public blockchain, users leave a trail of evidence for anyone to analyze, and elite entities may cringe at the thought of treasury operations and trading strategies taking place in the open—even if blockchains prove more efficient than legacy systems.

With the U.S. government’s prosecution of developers behind coin-mixing services like Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet, it may feel like privacy may have become secondary, but Ryan described Wall Street’s needs as a potential Trojan horse, when it comes to sharing data on-chain. The benefits and normalization, he argued, should trickle down to average users.

“As we begin to upgrade these markets, institutions will demand privacy, and we’ll move the needle forward in terms of practical, applied and compliant privacy,” he said.

A ZK proof is a method used in cryptography to prove that something is known without revealing the known information directly. The concept powers privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Zcash, and historically, it’s been viewed as a way to help scale Ethereum.

Ethereum’s ecosystem has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ZK-powered networks. Although Ryan thinks that gives its developers an advantage, some companies are taking a distinct approach to privacy in creating their own blockchains.

Tempo, a blockchain incubated by payments giant Stripe and investment firm Paradigm, is set to feature built-in privacy measures. Arc, another layer-1 network that’s being developed by stablecoin issuer Circle, is expected to have “selectively shielded balances and transactions.”

That suggests widespread privacy in crypto may not be contingent on Wall Street’s participation. But in the coming years, Ryan said privacy on Ethereum will likely become more commonplace, through “bespoke applications that handle privacy in a more granular way.”

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September 6, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

With Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, Lizardcube gives that pixel-perfect 16-bit Streets of Rage 4 treatment to another Sega classic

by admin August 27, 2025

All of us who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s have had a decent amount of time to ponder what it is that really makes the video game ninja such a special thing. It’s the hard strikes and the proximity to magic, sure, but it’s also something else. A ninja moves with a particular lightness. No need for a foley artist to mix in footsteps, because when these characters move it’s as is icing sugar is being dusted over the soft earth. So there’s a lovely contradiction at the heart of it. Cor, it hurts when one of these people kicks you through a wall, but cor, they’re so nimble and and deft and precise – so gentle – you kind of have to forgive them for everything.

It’s this kind of contradiction that powers Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. I’ve only spent the morning with this, but please be aware: it’s a deeply good video game. The lineage is pure early 1990s school playground: Sega at its sharpest. And now Lizardcube is in charge of the design, which means the team behind reimagining Streets of Rage and – my heart! – Wonder Boy 3 is back meddling gorgeously with my formative video game memories.

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The new Shinobi is a 2D-scrolling action game far too precise and poised to refer to as a beat-’em-up. The first level sends you through a village that’s being burnt to the ground by baddies: perfect cinematic stuff in which to learn how to air dash, double-jump and blitz your foes with combos. Those foes come with swords or ninja stars – or guns, in one case, which feels like a double sting: how could you? – and while the whole thing is wonderfully hand-drawn with sharp black lines and Silver Age poses, the sense of connection makes it feel like the most pixel-perfect 16-bit game you ever played.

That contradiction, though! This Shinobi is not shy when it comes to big attacks. There are gleeful combos and a whole shop full of new moves to unlock. There are also Ninpo moves that are tied to elements by the looks of things, and a range of super-strength Ninjutsu screen-clearers, the first of which left me checking whether my eyebrows had been burnt off. If you’re looking to attack people, you are well-catered for here.

But my favourite move isn’t an attack at all. It’s the Ninja Flip, which you can trigger just after an attack. This allows you, with a squeeze of the bumper, to cartwheel over your enemy, landing behind them oh so softly, so as to continue attacking or just grant yourself some space. It’s useful in combat and it’s useful when the levels start to become more maze-like, with locked doors and switches and secrets to find.

But more than that, it just sells the other half of being a Ninja. The icing sugar softness. The ability to dance lightly through absolute carnage. It’s a show-stopping piece of dismissiveness which makes you feel completely in control of every situation. A bit like Lizardcube, in other words.

Code for Shinobi: Art of Vengeance was provided by the publisher.

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August 27, 2025 0 comments