Written by: Max.S

In the past two years, when we talk about "blockchain" or "RWA (Real World Asset tokenization)," the first reaction of most traditional finance practitioners is: "Isn't this just turning assets into tokens and selling them on compliant exchanges (like HashKey, OSL)? There’s no liquidity there, it’s meaningless."

This view was correct for a long time. If RWA is merely about moving off-chain assets to a liquidity-starved on-chain island, then it is indeed a false proposition.

However, while we observe amidst skepticism, the underlying logic of the bond market is quietly undergoing a transformation. From Siemens completing a €300 million settlement on a public chain in an instant, to BlackRock bringing U.S. Treasuries on-chain, and MicroStrategy leveraging convertible bond structures to unlock a market value of hundreds of billions, a brand new "RWA + bonds" model is taking shape.

This is no longer about "speculating on tokens," but about restructuring the entire lifecycle of bond issuance, registration, settlement, and circulation.

Before diving into the cases, let’s honestly face the pain points of the traditional bond market. Despite having powerful infrastructures like Euroclear and DTCC, bond issuance remains a "labor-intensive, high-friction, long-cycle" process:

• Settlement delays (T+2/T+3): Multiple intermediaries (custodians, clearinghouses, CSDs) lead to a time lag in the delivery of funds and securities, resulting in counterparty risk and capital occupation costs.
• High intermediary costs: Each layer of intermediary takes a cut, making it extremely costly for small and medium-sized enterprises to issue bonds, creating a high barrier to entry.
• Information silos: Difficulties in penetrating regulatory oversight for bondholders, and different countries' custody systems do not interconnect, making cross-border bond issuance akin to "crossing mountains and rivers."

The core of RWA bond issuance is to use blockchain as a "unified ledger" to achieve atomic settlement and programmability.

We will explore the next phase of RWA through the following four aspects — financial infrastructure transformation and asset structure innovation.

Public Chain as CSD (Central Securities Depository) — A "dimensionality reduction" of infrastructure

• Siemens: Issued €300 million digital bonds on Polygon (public chain), selling directly to investors, bypassing traditional central securities depositories (CSDs), and completed central bank currency settlement in minutes through the SWIAT permissioned chain.
• BlackRock: Purchased Quincy City’s $6.5 million municipal bonds through JPMorgan’s Onyx platform, achieving the first fully on-chain registration and settlement.

This represents the most "orthodox" reform and is the path most easily accepted by traditional financial institutions. Here, blockchain replaces the traditional Central Securities Depository (CSD). In the traditional model, the transfer of securities and funds operates on two parallel tracks, requiring third-party guarantees.

On-chain, smart contracts ensure "payment on delivery," and can even achieve T+0 real-time settlement. Siemens' case demonstrates that without the large-scale intervention of traditional banks as intermediary underwriters, companies can directly face qualified investors. For high-rated bond issuers, this means significant savings on underwriting fees.

In the future, technology service providers that can offer "on-chain bookkeeping" services will replace some traditional back-office operational functions, becoming new infrastructure giants.

The "DTC Model" for Corporate Bonds — Turning Bonds into Customer Relationship Management Tools

• Toyota Financial: Issued ¥1 billion corporate bonds on the Progmat platform. But this is not just about borrowing money; Toyota links the bonds to digital wallets, returning points and redeemable benefits to investors based on subscription amounts.
• Muff Trading: A Swiss precious metals trader directly issued bonds on Polygon through the Obligate protocol, with no banks involved.

This is the DTC (Direct-to-Consumer) revolution in bond issuance. Traditional bonds are cold financial contracts; once investors buy bonds, they have no connection with the company beyond receiving interest. But Toyota's case showcases the programmability of RWA bonds.

For corporate finance departments, issuing bonds is no longer just a financial action; it has become part of brand marketing and user loyalty management. This "functional bond" is extremely difficult to achieve under traditional securities account systems but is easily accomplished on a programmable blockchain.

A "equity-type bond issuance platform" designed specifically for consumer-oriented companies (aviation, hospitality, automotive) will be a huge untapped market.

On-chain ABS — Activating the Liquidity Engine of "Long Tail Assets"

• Centrifuge / MakerDAO / Maple: These protocols package real-world invoices, trade finance, and real estate loans into NFTs (non-fungible tokens), collateralizing them to on-chain stablecoin protocols (like Maker) to exchange for DAI or USDC to lend to businesses.

This represents the globalization and atomization of asset-backed securities (ABS). The threshold for traditional ABS is extremely high, with legal fees, rating fees, and SPV setup costs often reaching millions, resulting in only large asset packages being able to be securitized. Credit assets of small and medium-sized enterprises (like a $500,000 supply chain invoice) find it hard to enter the capital market.

What can RWA protocols do:

Structured Layered Automation: Automatically split senior and junior priorities through smart contracts, eliminating the need for manual calculations and allocations.

Global Liquidity Access: The asset side may be in Southeast Asia or Latin America, while the funding side consists of global DeFi players (investors holding USDT/USDC).

This effectively opens up a global permissionless bond market. For practitioners focused on private bonds for small and medium-sized enterprises, this is akin to accessing a 24/7 trading pool of funds, no longer limited by the lending limits of banks in a single region.

Those who can assess the quality of off-chain assets and "bridge" them on-chain will become the coveted assets initiators and risk control experts in DeFi protocols.

Convertible Bonds 2.0 — Crypto Assets as a New "Underlying Beta"

• MicroStrategy (MSTR): This is a very special case. They issued convertible notes with extremely low interest rates (even 0%), raising funds to purchase BTC.

Investors are essentially buying a "call option." If BTC surges, the stock price skyrockets, and the bonds convert to equity, yielding huge profits for investors; if BTC falls, the bonds mature with principal and interest (backed by the company's cash flow).

This brings immense imagination to traditional bond design. The conversion value of traditional convertible bonds is tied to the company's operating performance. MicroStrategy has created a convertible bond linked to "digital asset reserves."

This is essentially a perfect closed loop of "issuing bonds in the crypto space, raising funds in fiat, and asset repatriation." For companies with substantial computing power, energy reserves, or digital asset reserves (like mining companies and tech firms), issuing such rights-containing bonds can yield massive liquidity at low costs, while investors gain a high-quality asset with "downside protection (bond characteristics) and unlimited upside (equity/crypto characteristics)."

Designing and underwriting "crypto asset allocation convertible bonds" for publicly listed companies will be a new high-profit business line for investment banks.

Returning to the initial question: Are RWA bonds just a conceptual hype?

If your understanding stops at "just listing on a compliant exchange," then indeed it is. But if we look beyond the surface, we will find that the essence of RWA bonds is a "revolution" formed by the aggregation of various "micro-innovations" in financial infrastructure:

For traditional bond practitioners, RWA is not about overturning their current jobs, but about upgrading their "Excel spreadsheets" and "SWIFT messages" to "smart contracts." In this blue ocean, it is no longer a solo act by exchanges, but a stage for professionals who understand compliance, asset structure, and dare to leverage technology to enhance efficiency.

Rather than watching from the sidelines at the liquidity-starved exchange, it is better to think: How can blockchain technology be used to issue a "next-generation bond" for your assets that settles faster, costs less, and has a more flexible structure?

The winds are rising from the edges, and the digital wave in the bond market has just begun.

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