Wintermute says real-world assets could become the next meaningful source of new liquidity for crypto as ETFs and DAT move from cycle-defining catalysts to ordinary market infrastructure.
The article, written by Jasper De Maere and translated by TechFlow, frames the issue around access rather than the absolute amount of money available. In Wintermute’s view, bull markets are shaped by liquidity, and liquidity needs a route into the asset class. Capital does not simply enter crypto because it exists elsewhere in the financial system. It tends to arrive when a new channel appears and pulls money in.
Each cycle had its own dominant entry point
Wintermute argues that previous cycles were driven by distinct channels that first produced one-way inflows and repriced markets, then later became normalized paths where money could move in and out more freely.
It breaks those phases down as follows:
- VC and ICO in 2017/18, with fund capital and token sales supporting the first major institutional wave.
- Stablecoins in 2020/21, with net issuance of more than $120 billion in a single year, creating the on-chain dollar base that funded DeFi and altcoin activity.
- ETFs and DAT in 2024/25, with $63 billion in ETF net inflows and more than $115 billion in treasury accumulation, mostly repricing majors while leaving much of the rest of the market with limited benefit.
According to Wintermute, the ETF and DAT route has now fully normalized, and the market is waiting for the next mechanism that can carry another bull run.
RWA is still growing while other channels cooled
Wintermute says the dashed line in its first chart represents a fifth channel now taking shape. Net growth in RWA remains small compared with prior channel peaks, but it is the only line still moving higher while the others have rolled over.
The firm adds that inflows through these channels tend to dry up in bear markets. Its second chart shows that each cycle was largely carried by one dominant route, with total inflow peaks reaching about 12% of market cap in 2021 and 10% in 2025.
Once a channel normalizes, those inflows collapse toward zero. At the recent trough, total inflows were only about 2.4% of market cap, Wintermute says. During that period, ETFs turned to net outflows, a large share of DAT traded around or below net asset value, the appeal of financial leverage weakened, and stablecoin supply posted its sharpest contraction since the Terra collapse. Flows have recovered from the bottom over the past two weeks, but the firm says they still represent only a small fraction of prior cycle levels.
That kind of reset is not unusual in its telling. In earlier downturns, the next channel often began scaling while the previous one was fading. The difference this time is size. The channel now forming is still about an order of magnitude smaller and cannot yet carry the full load on its own.
Tokenization is not only moving assets on-chain
Wintermute says RWAs are usually described as assets being brought on-chain, but it sees them as a way of bringing liquidity in as well. Tokenized value has roughly tripled over about a year to a range above $30 billion, and growth continued even during the same stretch when the stablecoin base was shrinking.
That matters because the barrier between tokenized assets and crypto-native assets is getting thinner. Tokenized equities, tokenized funds, and crypto assets are increasingly sitting in the same wallet and settling through the same stablecoin rails. Wintermute describes stablecoins here as the conversion mechanism. In that setup, tokenization stops being only an asset migration story and starts functioning as a liquidity channel.
The firm draws a sharp contrast with earlier cycles. Previous channels delivered buyers directly into particular assets: VC and ICO into new tokens, stablecoins into DeFi and altcoin ecosystems, ETFs and DAT into majors and blue-chip altcoins. Tokenization works differently. The money initially buys Apple stock or a Treasury fund, not a crypto token.
But once that capital is already on-chain, moving it into BTC or altcoins becomes much easier. Earlier channels pushed capital into selected assets from the start. Tokenization, in Wintermute’s framing, places fresh capital inside the system first and only then allows broader reallocation.
It also says the short-term effect is likely to be quieter than an ETF launch day inflow shock. Over time, though, those balance sheets can be deployed across the ecosystem, and the friction of moving capital should continue to fall as the connecting infrastructure matures.
$16 billion over the last 12 months, but still early
Wintermute estimates that RWAs attracted about $16 billion over the past 12 months. That is roughly one-tenth of the best 12-month combined inflow from ETFs and DAT during the previous cycle, which is why the firm still views this channel as being in its climb phase.
Its third chart compares channels from the point when each first became measurable. Peak inflows usually appeared 20 to 60 months after launch: about 20 months for ETFs, 33 months for stablecoins, and 54 months for VC and ICO.
Using that same yardstick, the RWA channel is about 18 months old, with trailing 12-month inflows at around 0.9% of market cap. At a similar age, Wintermute says RWA is ahead of DAT and slightly behind ETFs. It describes that as evidence of an early-stage buildout rather than a failed trend.
Regulation and collateral usage are the key catalysts
Most tokenized assets so far are still cash management products, Treasuries, and money market funds inside permissioned wrappers, according to Wintermute. The infrastructure linking them to the rest of the system has only recently started to open.
The firm points to two sets of catalysts:
- Regulation: market structure legislation and tokenization frameworks are expanding who can hold tokenized securities and how they can be transferred, pushing them beyond closed permissioned pools.
- Mechanism: tokenized Treasuries and funds are starting to be accepted as collateral by major venues and DeFi, shifting them from idle cash on a balance sheet to working balances that can be put to use.
Wintermute says the liquidity of 2024/25 came through wrappers such as ETFs and DAT that held majors and blue-chip altcoins. BTC, ETH, and a small number of altcoins were repriced, while much of the broader system did not really receive that money.
Tokenization changes the entry point, not the end destination. Capital first buys the wrapper, then sits on-chain and can later be reallocated as friction falls. That leads Wintermute to two questions it sees as decisive: whether RWA capital, once on-chain, moves beyond the wrappers; and if it does, where the value settles, across assets, settlement rails, collateral infrastructure, and DeFi primitives.
The signal Wintermute is watching
The piece adds that tokenized assets are held more by balance sheets than by traders, which matters for timing. That makes any liquidity effect and any cycle impact more likely to build gradually than arrive as a sudden shock. Wintermute says the rhythm should look closer to the stablecoin channel than to an ETF launch day.
Over the past two weeks, inflows through existing channels have improved, including ETFs and stablecoin minting. That can support a rebound, the firm says, but a full cycle usually still needs a new route to carry the load. For now, RWA is the only candidate that is still expanding.
What Wintermute is watching next is whether tokenized balance sheets begin moving beyond those wrappers, appear more often as collateral, and keep entering DeFi, producing measurable flows in secondary markets and lending activity. In its framework, that would mark the shift from a potential channel to one that is actually operating.
