TokenPost.ai
The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is accelerating into a multi-tens-of-billions market, but for financial institutions operating in jurisdictions with unclear rules, momentum comes with a hard trade-off: move early and risk legal ambiguity, or wait for domestic legislation and potentially forfeit first-mover advantage. A new report from Tiger Research argues that this decision—whether to wait, pilot within a regulatory sandbox, or expand abroad—will shape who builds durable RWA competitiveness over the next cycle.
In its latest analysis, Tiger Research estimated the RWA market expanded rapidly in the first half of 2026 to roughly $25 billion to $36 billion, as institutions increasingly view tokenization as more than a crypto experiment. By converting cash flows and ownership records into onchain representations, issuers can automate coupon payments and redemptions, shorten settlement windows, and broaden distribution to a wider investor base—all efficiencies that have become increasingly attractive in a world of higher rates and tighter balance-sheet scrutiny.
Yet in many countries, a core legal question remains unsettled: what is the enforceable status of rights recorded on a distributed ledger, and how should investor protection be applied when assets are issued, traded, and serviced through token-based rails? For banks, brokers, and asset managers, that uncertainty can turn product rollout into a compliance and liability minefield, even when underlying assets are traditional and low-risk.
Tiger Research frames the strategic responses in three buckets. The first is to wait until domestic law fully catches up. This approach best controls regulatory risk, but the report warns it can concede the early market to foreign competitors that build track records, distribution, and liquidity before late entrants are cleared to participate.
The second is limited experimentation through a ‘regulatory sandbox’. While sandboxes can provide a controlled environment for proof-of-concept issuance, Tiger Research notes they often constrain products to fractionalized offerings or narrow pilots, leaving institutions short of experience with standardized, securities-based RWA at scale.
The third path—treated as the most aggressive but potentially most effective—is to enter overseas markets where tokenized securities frameworks are more mature. Under this approach, issuers launch products such as digital bonds in established jurisdictions first, building operational history and references that can later be leveraged for broader expansion. In practice, the report suggests, market credibility may increasingly hinge on demonstrated execution rather than domestic legal timelines.