Caitong Securities: The RWA track may reach a scale of USD 16 trillion by 2030, suggesting attention to five major investment directions

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Caitong Securities has released a research report stating that Real World Asset Tokenization (RWA), as a key path for blockchain technology to empower the real economy, currently has a global market size of $25.5 billion (excluding stablecoins) and is expected to exceed $16 trillion by 2030, accounting for 10% of global GDP. Investors are advised to pay attention to stablecoin issuers and their shareholders/potential issuers, virtual asset exchanges, the RWA sector, technology service providers, and cross-border payment sectors.

The main points of Caitong Securities are as follows:

RWA: On-chain financing means, bridging on-chain funds and real assets

RWA, or Real World Assets, refers to the process of converting physical or financial assets in the real world into tradable digital tokens on the blockchain through blockchain technology. For asset holders, RWA is an emerging financing channel with advantages such as fast financing, low costs, and strong liquidity. For investors, RWA serves as a supplementary investment target on-chain, providing stable returns and lowering the threshold for participation in high-value assets. RWA has a threefold connection with stablecoins: stablecoins are the most successful use case for RWA, stablecoins are used as payment tools on-chain to purchase other RWA products, and RWA products on-chain provide more investment targets for stablecoin holders.

The existing scale of RWA is $25.5 billion, expected to reach $16 trillion by 2030

According to statistics from RWA.xyz, as of June 2025, the total global RWA assets, excluding stablecoins, amount to $25.5 billion. Private credit (accounting for 58.5%), U.S. Treasury bonds (29.6%), and commodities (6.4%) are the top three RWA products. Currently, RWA products are mainly issued on Ethereum (market share 58.2%), ZKsync Era, Aptos, and other public chains. According to a joint forecast by BCG and ADDX, the market size of RWA is expected to reach $16 trillion by 2030, accounting for 10% of global GDP.

RWA issuance requires going through asset assessment/compliance/on-chain/issuance/operation and other stages

RWA relies on blockchain, smart contracts, oracle, identity verification, and compliance technology, among others. The specific issuance process includes asset selection and assessment, formulation of asset compliance framework, asset minting on-chain, asset issuance and trading, and subsequent asset operation.

Typical cases of RWA: Tokenization practices in real estate, financial assets, renewable energy, and computing power leasing

Real estate tokenization: focusing on real estate and hotels as main practice scenarios, such as the U.S. RealT real estate RWA platform and Azqira's multi-hotel RWA investment platform in Dubai; financial asset tokenization: bonds, funds, stocks, precious metals, and commodities, such as GF Securities' tokenized securities (GFTkoen), BlackRock's U.S. dollar institutional digital liquidity fund (BUIDL), and Tether's gold RWA product XAUT; renewable energy tokenization: China's advantages, with Ant Group collaborating with partners to issue RWA products for charging piles/photovoltaic panels/battery swap stations. Computing power tokenization: overseas Compute Labs exploring "GPURWAVault," issuing on-chain returns from NVIDIA chips Risk Warning: Insufficient liquidity risk, regulatory uncertainty risk, technical security risk