Real estate's liquidity revolution: Why RWAs are no longer optional
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The following is a guest post and opinion from Abdul Rafay Gadit, Co-Founder of ZIGChain.
US real estate alone is worth over $100 trillion, while the global market exceeds $700 trillion. Yet, for an asset tied to the ground we walk on, it remains surprisingly illiquid. The World Economic Forum reports that illiquidity in real estate markets contributes to transaction costs between 1–3% of property values—translating to tens of billions annually.
More importantly, this illiquidity creates artificial barriers for both the buy and sell sides—excluding homeowners and most potential investors from exchanging value and blocking crypto’s $1+ trillion capital market from accessing the most trusted asset class in history.
RWAs – A Quick Definition
Tokenization, pioneered by Ethereum in 2015, allows nearly any asset to be broken into tradable digital shares. Recent optimizations have reduced tokenization costs to near-zero on many chains. Real World Assets (RWAs) is an expansive term and, depending on who you ask, encompasses virtually every tokenized asset that is not natively crypto.
“Soft” RWAs include stablecoins and tokenized equity. “Hard” RWAs are tokenized representations of physical assets like real estate, vehicles, or precious metals. While there have been some high-profile examples of RWAs in real estate—like the $18 million tokenized offering of a portion of the St. Regis Aspen resort—the real flywheel will begin in the trenches of the relatively unsexy world of global middle-class real estate.
How RWAs Will Transform Real Estate
In the past, RWAs have been hamstrung by lack of liquidity. For real estate RWAs to succeed, liquidity must flow both ways—requiring both widespread availability of tokenized real estate and well-crafted incentives designed by networked teams to bring existing capital into these holdings.
Fractionalizing large asset-backed debt into smaller pieces allows retail investors to participate with any amount of capital, expanding the potential liquidity pool. However, feasibility doesn’t guarantee success. RWA builders must strategically attract both institutional and retail liquidity to avoid marketplace failure.
What we’re witnessing is the early stages of a network effect. Each new property tokenized increases the utility of the entire ecosystem, drawing more investors, which in turn attracts more property owners to tokenize. The critical mass needed for this flywheel is approaching faster than most industry veterans realize. Projects that successfully bridge traditional real estate expertise with blockchain infrastructure will likely emerge as tomorrow’s market leaders.
One example is Propchain, which tokenizes fractions of real estate. They, and other companies like them, provide annualized yields with shorter lock-up periods compared to traditional real estate investments. There are also localized options like KiiChain, which is focused on unlocking LATAM’s RWA potential.
The features of tokenized real estate don’t just optimize existing processes—they fundamentally reinvent what real estate ownership and investment mean in the digital age.
Tokenization’s transformative power comes from what it enables:
- Fractional Ownership: Properties divided into thousands of tokens, allowing minimal-capital investment
- Programmable Compliance: Smart contracts automating regulatory requirements, eliminating intermediaries
- Global Liquidity Pools: Access to worldwide capital instead of local markets
- 24/7 Markets: Continuous trading versus business-hours-only transactions
Fears of RWAs in Real Estate Are Overblown
Suspicion around tokenizing real estate is understandable given the 2008 crisis. However, tokenization is actually the opposite of what caused that collapse. While the ’08 crisis combined high-risk mortgages into abstracted “de-risked” units, tokenization reduces abstraction by breaking single instruments into smaller, transparent pieces.
Tokenization doesn’t de-risk assets or claim to—it simply improves liquidity and democratizes participation in real estate’s wealth-building potential. It addresses the dual challenge of home affordability and investment access by enabling broader participation in leveraged, stable assets.
Conclusion: The Inevitable Tokenization Revolution
The real estate market stands at a crossroads. Those clinging to traditional models will increasingly find themselves outpaced and outmaneuvered by tokenized alternatives. RWAs aren’t merely a technological upgrade—they’re the vanguard of a fundamental restructuring of how we value, exchange, and leverage the $700 trillion sleeping giant.
For investors, the message is clear: adapt or be left behind. As regulatory frameworks mature and institutional adoption accelerates, the first-mover advantage window is rapidly closing. By 2030, we’ll look back at untokenized real estate assets as we now view paper stock certificates—quaint relics of an inefficient past.
The liquidity revolution won’t just change how we trade property—it will democratize access to the world’s most enduring store of value, potentially unlocking trillions in previously frozen capital. In a world of increasing financial volatility, tokenized real estate offers the perfect synthesis of stability and accessibility that both traditional and crypto investors desperately seek.
The question is no longer if real estate will embrace RWAs, but who will lead the charge—and who will be left explaining to shareholders why they missed the revolution.
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