The market for tokenized real-world assets has moved past $25 billion, yet the sector is facing a sharp challenge from blockchain adviser Anndy Lian, who argues that much of the activity looks more like traditional finance repackaged on-chain than genuine crypto adoption.
In a detailed thread, Lian presented an 11-point critique of RWA. He framed his comments as coming from experience rather than distance: he has been in crypto since 2012, lived through the ICO cycle, and invested in tokenized real estate as early as 2018. His point was blunt. He is not skeptical because he misunderstands the sector, but because he believes he understands its limits.
Why Lian says the blockchain layer adds little
His main objection centers on structure. Many tokenized assets still settle in U.S. dollars, rely on courts for enforcement, and keep custody arrangements off-chain. If the blockchain layer does not introduce a distinct function, he argues, its role becomes hard to justify.
Lian also questioned whether capital entering RWA protocols should even be described as crypto-native. In his view, these products are fiat-wrapped, legally ring-fenced, and redeemable outside the chain environment, making them closer to branding than to actual decentralization. He was equally critical of oracles, calling the issue “fatal” because smart contracts cannot independently verify property damage, financial filings, or whether collateral still exists.
On tokenized real estate, his assessment was direct: tokenization does not create liquidity, it exposes the lack of it.
Institutional products continue to scale
That criticism sits beside a very different market picture. According to figures cited from Blockonomi, Ethereum’s RWA market rose above $15 billion in 2025, roughly tripling from the previous year. The expansion was driven by tokenized gold, Treasury-backed products, and yield-bearing stablecoins.
Tokenized money market funds have now exceeded $9 billion. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund leads that segment with more than $2.5 billion, while Franklin Templeton’s BENJI fund has reached $844 million in tokenized government securities.
The XRP Ledger has also posted rapid growth. In just the first two months of 2026, it added $1.3 billion in tokenized RWA value, already above the $900 million recorded for all of 2025. The report says the network now holds 63% of all tokenized U.S. Treasury supply, ahead of Ethereum and Solana.
The one use case that could change his view
Lian did not reject the category outright. He identified one scenario that could make him constructive: tokenized stocks used to support better perpetual derivatives. He described that model as a crypto-native product inspired by RWA rather than RWA itself.
For him, the threshold is clear. He wants to see crypto primitives that cannot exist inside traditional finance, including permissionless composability, censorship-resistant settlement, and native digital scarcity. As institutions keep allocating capital to tokenized assets, the central question remains open: whether the billions now flowing into the sector reflect real adoption or a more sophisticated form of financial repackaging.