RWA narrative

Real-world assets, is heating up more and more. BlackRock CEO says RWAs will be a major usecase for crypto

If you want to start exploring this niche, this sampling will help you a lot.

Here you will find links to the Twitter accounts of the RWA projects highlighted in the panorama.

Messari PRO recently released an interesting mini-report outlining how RWAs are invading the classic financial sector.

Over the past few months, traditional funds and asset issuers have launched alternative asset tokenization programs via public crypto-networks. Recent asset releases have revived interest in real-world asset portability (RWA) onchain and opened up new revenue opportunities within decentralized finance (DeFi).

Private equity firm Hamilton Lane has partnered with Securitize, a digital asset release platform, to tokenize part of its $2.1 billion flagship equity fund on the Polygon network. The fund requires a minimum investment of 20 ,000, well below the typical minimum buy-in (fund entry) of 5 million for private investors.

Hamilton Lane is one of the largest private wealth managers, investing more than 37 billion in private markets in 2021. It manages 824 billion in assets.

Similarly, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced Project Guardian, a pilot program to tokenize bonds and deposits that can be used in various DeFi strategies.

A bank participating in the program will be able to tokenize bonds and deposits that can be used in permitted liquidity pools. This capital can be lent in DeFi applications such as Aave and Compound to earn interest or as collateral to access credit. The pilot has attracted JPMorgan, DBS Bank and Marketnode as initial partners.

Broader Context

Since the first DeFi protocols began gaining momentum in 2020, they have been a driving force in attracting users and traders into the crypto space. DeFi experiments have enabled innovative financial applications such as decentralized automated market makers, stackablecoins, credit, insurance, swaps, synthetic assets, and derivatives.

Total locked-in value (TVL) in DeFi applications, conventionally translated as the amount of capital under management, has skyrocketed to a peak of 248 billion in December 2021 as asset prices rise and new users are attracted. TVL is supported by liquidity mining programs in which protocols drive growth by temporarily increasing returns by offering users rewards in the form of native protocol tokens, such as Compound rewards lenders with COMP tokens.

These returns have been volatile as token prices have fallen and overall interest in crypto has declined during the 2022 bear market. Historic USDC Stablecoin credit rates peaked in December 2020 at 18% for Aave and 8% for Compound. Those yields fell to 0.75% and 1.62% today, respectively.
As the yield on one-year U.S. Treasuries is around 5%, investors have rushed into safe government securities. Treasury bond yields rose sharply as the Federal Reserve abandoned its zero interest rate policy, with the one-year bond up from the 0.3% yield in December 2021.
As the risk-free interest rate in traditional finance has risen and DeFi yields have declined, investor participation in the latter has declined significantly in recent months, with TVL down more than 75% from its December 2021 high to 52 billion today.

To attract new capital, DeFi protocols are beginning to use RWAs as a source of collateral or new investment opportunities, providing more stable returns for investors.

Tokenization of real assets, such as real estate, commodities, private equity and credit, bonds and art, is a concept that has been quietly seeping in since 2018. RWAs take advantage of blockchain technology for the on-chain introduction of traditional assets.

Key quote:
"RWA tokenization offers tangible benefits, including lower minimum investment and increased access through shared ownership, increased trading of previously illiquid assets, increased transparency and security as blockchain records an unchanging record of transaction history, and automated ownership management and compliance."

Key statistics:
When the seven largest private credit blockchain-RWA protocols are combined, the historical loan value is $4.2 billion and active loans are 456 million. These protocols use DeFi to provide private loans to businesses and include Maple, Centrifuge, Goldfinch, Credix, TrueFi, Clearpool and Ribbon Lend. They offer an average APR of 12.63%.


Outlook and Implications

DeFi must offer higher returns than traditional investments to remain competitive and attract capital. DeFi applications such as Maple Finance, Goldfinch and Centrifuge pool cryptocurrency holders' funds and lend them to generate income through different strategies.

Maple Finance is a platform for institutional borrowers to leverage the DeFi ecosystem for loans with insufficient collateral. Pool Delegates are loan officers who create and manage pools on the platform and find institutional borrowers by structuring terms for each loan pool. Lenders can then contribute crypto funds to the pools they want to support by lending their assets in exchange for income. To date, Maple has made cumulative loans of nearly $1.8 billion.

Goldfinch is in the business of making loans to real businesses in emerging markets. Borrowers must be audited to determine their loan eligibility. Once approved, they can create pools and determine loan terms such as interest rate, loan amount, term and late fees. Lenders can grant capital to individual pools at their discretion and be the first to bear capital losses on impaired loans, thereby earning higher profits. Alternatively, liquidity providers can provide capital that is distributed to all pools of borrowers, earning lower returns with less risk of capital loss.

While Maple and Goldfinch focus on private lending, Centrifuge allows more forms of real assets, such as real estate loans and freight accounts, to enter the DeFi ecosystem. On a Centrifuge trading platform called Tinlake, the creator converts a real asset into a non-transferable token (NFT) and includes the appropriate legal documentation. Asset pools are created using NFTs as collateral representing RWAs. Investors can then provide capital to pools that match their risk preferences.

Real asset tokenization allows DeFi to enter some of the largest financial markets. Global real estate was valued at 327 trillion in 2020 and non-financial corporate debt at more than 87 trillion in 2022. These are colossal markets to which tokenization could bring increased liquidity and new investors.

Decision Points

When evaluating income opportunities, investors should examine the track record of existing DeFi-applications that use real assets. Have they defaulted? What is the underwriting and due diligence process and how do they manage risk? Underwriters that require borrowers to over-collateralize, have access to insurance, or have support mechanisms in place in the event of default may perform better over time.

Notably, Maple Finance had a 36 million loan default in December 2022 in one of its loan pools. The borrower, Orthogonal Trading, suffered a loss because of the FTX collapse. In response, Maple launched version 2.0, which introduced a faster default and liquidation process for loans that failed. This points to the need for better risk parameters and sector diversification among borrowers for credit DeFi platforms with insufficient collateral, such as Maple.

Instead of lending capital directly, investors can also bet on the success of DeFi-oriented RWAs by buying their own tokens. The prices of these tokens will correlate with the rest of the crypto market, but may show greater value for winning platforms.


What's causing this boom? Many protocols that previously offered volatile yields have now reduced yields, and as the government offers more attractive yields through bonds, there is a shortage of new capital. By offering RWAs as a source of collateral, DeFi is opening its doors to the broader financial market of non-cryptocurrency natives. Having assets backed in part by RWAs also reduces risk for cryptocurrency lenders.

We can expect more and more institutions to adopt tokenized RWAs ), as seen by JPMorgan executing its first real-time trade using tokenized yen and the Singapore dollar at Polygon in November. Hong Kong Central Bank is now offering tokenized green bonds, and other investment banks such as Credit Agricole CIB and SEB are collaborating to develop a platform for digital bonds.

If you have read this far you are wondering what will happen to bitcoin, we are close to the dates I said in November 2022. I was talking about April-May correction. it is really going to happen, just like a rock we are unlikely to fall before we have to liquidate most of the short positions. so i expect a slight correction upwards 29200-30050 area

Best regards EXCAVO

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