The RWA Mirage or Tokenization Without Transformation
Fast forward, Real World Asset tokenization was supposed to be different. Yes, it was the “serious” use case that would finally bring blockchain to mainstream adoption. Tokenize real estate, they said. Then, democratize access to fine art, commodities, and private credit…the list went on. Give the little guy a piece of assets that only the wealthy could access before!
The optimists continue to push projections further out. While some expect $50 trillion in RWA annual trading by the end of the decade, Wall Street is capitalizing on the projected $30 trillion RWA tokenization market. But these are the same institutions and voices that promised Web3 would revolutionize everything by 2023! The goalposts keep moving along with staggering numbers, the revolution keeps being “just around the corner,” and meanwhile, actual adoption remains stubbornly minimal. But what’s really happening out there?
The Invisible Victims
Long story short, RWA tokenization, for all its hype, represents a rounding error in traditional finance. As of early 2026, the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization market had reached approximately $34 billion, up from $24 billion in mid-2025, driven largely by private credit and tokenized Treasuries. Here is where things get interesting: despite this growth, it remains tiny compared to the $300 trillion global real estate market or the $5 trillion private equity market.
Sounds massive until you realize that stablecoins — these digital dollars, not revolutionary new assets — make up the overwhelming majority of that figure! Liquidity and secondary trading remain limited, and regulatory frameworks are still evolving, which constrains broader adoption. Some projections suggest the RWA tokenization market could reach $30 trillion by the 2030s, but these scenarios assume seamless legal, liquidity, and institutional adoption conditions. In reality, tokenization has moved from concept to institutional pilot, yet actual usage remains a small fraction of global financial assets.
Anyways, behind every statistic is a human story. The people didn’t lose money because they were stupid (most of the time). An entire ecosystem — exchanges, influencers, venture capitalists, media outlets — told them this was their chance to escape the system that had failed them. They were promised that, unlike traditional finance, Web3 would give everyone a fair shot.
Instead, they discovered that the new system was just as rigged as the old one, except with less regulation and more ways to lose everything overnight.
The Institutional Pivot: Same Game, New Players
And here’s where the story gets particularly cynical. After retail investors got demolished, guess who started showing up? BlackRock’s $2.4 billion BUIDL fund started being integrated into decentralized trading infrastructure through UniswapX, but access remains gated for qualified participants and market makers rather than broad retail democratization — more infrastructure capture than genuine democratization.
Likewise, Apollo’s tokenized private credit product (ACRED), an on-chain version of the Apollo Diversified Credit Fund — launched via Securitize across multiple blockchains, again aimed at qualified investors and institutional channels rather than truly opening these markets to everyday retail audiences.
To democratize anything? No, sir, but to capture another market. The institutions that Web3 was supposed to disrupt didn’t die. So, they waited for the bubble to pop, for retail to get crushed, for regulations to clarify, and then they swooped in with their billions to dominate the space. The revolution against Wall Street invited Wall Street to take over.
And why not? In 2023, the Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector was the single largest industry vertical in the Web3 market, accounting for more than 23 % of total market share — ahead of IT, media, healthcare, retail, and other sectors. That means legacy financial institutions captured a dominant position in the very ecosystem that was supposed to disrupt them.
What Lies Ahead? The Same Cycle, Repackaged
The harsh reality is that Web3 and RWA, as we’ve known them, have largely failed their stated mission. They’ve enriched a new class of opportunists while leaving the systemic problems they promised to solve largely untouched.
But don’t worry — there’s already a new narrative being spun! “2026 is the year of institutional adoption”, “This time it’s different “, “The infrastructure is finally ready,” and the list goes on.
At the end of the day, it’s the same movie with a new cast. According to CoinGecko, investor interest in RWAs increased from 6.48% in 2023 to 8.64% by the end of 2024, advancing from the 6th to the 3rd most popular market segment. The hype machine is warming up again, and the projections are flowing.
And, of course, a new generation of retail investors — who didn’t live through 2022, who don’t remember the promises that turned to ash — they’re being told that this time, it’s real. This time, the technology is mature. This time, the use cases are clear. This time, you’ll get your Lambo too!
Perhaps failure was necessary. Perhaps we needed to learn that:
Technology alone doesn’t change human nature. Greed, tribalism, and short-term thinking persist regardless of the underlying protocol.Decentralization without purpose is just chaos. Removing centralized control doesn’t automatically create better systems, but often just creates power vacuums filled by the most ruthless actors.Financial inclusion requires more than access. Giving people the ability to trade 24/7 on decentralized exchanges doesn’t address the lack of education, opportunity, or economic security.Markets reward extraction, not creation. Until we fix the incentives, we’ll keep building casinos instead of communities.
Beyond the Lambo: An Inconvenient Truth
If anything meaningful emerges from the Web3 era, it will come from those who ask different questions: not “How do I get rich?” but “How do we build systems worth having?”
But here’s the brutal truth: those people won’t get funded. They won’t get headlines or drive billions in trading volume. That’s because building actual solutions to real problems is slow, unglamorous, and not particularly profitable in the short term.
Blockchain technology, smart contracts, and tokenization — these are powerful innovations. But until we can overcome our obsession with personal gains and focus on genuine collective aspirations, they’ll remain tools in search of a purpose beyond speculation.
The Cycle Continues?
So the revolution was promised. The CEO of Binance saw his personal net worth plunge dramatically during the crypto market downturn — his wealth was reported to fall by roughly $82 billion from peak estimates during the 2022–23 crypto winter. Likewise, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, went from a multibillion-dollar net worth to essentially zero amid FTX’s collapse and related legal outcomes.
For many retail holders, the story was even harsher: data from the Bank for International Settlements shows that the average retail Bitcoin investor lost nearly 48 % of the funds they put in between 2015 and late 2022, a reflection of broader crypto market drawdowns and bear-market conditions.
The Lambos were delivered — to a select few. The system that enabled that transfer of wealth from many to a few? That system is still very much alive. And maybe, just maybe, that was the point all along.
The question isn’t whether Web3 or RWA will succeed. But, succeed at what? If the goal was to create a new class of crypto-billionaires while ordinary people lost billions, then mission accomplished. If the goal was to democratize finance and distribute power more equitably, then we’re not just failing — we’re moving backward.
Will anyone still be paying attention? Or will we be too busy chasing the next promised revolution?
Let’s end with cold, hard math:
$2 trillion lost in the 2022 crypto crash$3.6 billion stolen in Web3 security breaches in 2022 alone167 major Web3 attacks in a single year23 % market share held by banks and financial institutions in Web3 (BFSI)Estimated median investor losses of over$500— half their investment gone.
And the list could continue. These numbers tell quite a story: it was a wealth transfer from retail investors to early movers, from the naive to the connected, from the many to the few.
The promise of Web3 wasn’t wrong. It was just premature — a vision hijacked by short-term greed before it had a chance to mature into something genuinely transformative. Whether it gets a second chance depends entirely on whether we can learn from this expensive education.
Or whether we’re doomed to repeat it, one purple Lambo at a time.
The Failing Promise of Web3 and RWA. Part II. was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.