Two summits - one topic? Real‑World Asset (RWA) Tokenisation

I recently attended the vountain GmbH Real‑World Asset Summit and the hy Consulting Group Web3 Summit, which also focused on real‑world asset (RWA) tokenisation this year.

But were they really talking about the same thing? Not quite.

RWA tokenisation has become a buzzword, yet there is no agreed‑upon definition of what a “real‑world asset” actually is. This lack of clarity fuels misunderstanding, so I would invite everyone to spell out explicitly what they mean when they say “RWA tokenisation”.

Originally, the term referred to physical assets such as real estate, art, or gold. Tokenising ownership in these assets is technically and legally constrained, because ownership rules are tied to jurisdiction - move an object across borders and the rules change. That is essentially why the Liechtenstein “container model” requires assets being held in Liechtenstein warehouses, and why tokenising a physical asset usually involves an SPV or trustee, meaning you hold it only indirectly and take on additional risk.

What I found refreshing is that vountain did not claim to tokenise ownership rights. Instead, it focused on collecting and securely storing the history of valuable objects - a classic provenance use case, for which blockchain genuinely adds value. It is therefore no surprise that insurers are joining in, offering contracts for assets whose value can be underpinned by an auditable, on‑chain history.

More recently, the term “RWA tokenisation” has been applied also to financial assets such as stocks and bonds – the focus of the hy Web3 Summit. That is, in fact, a different story. Title‑transfer rules for these instruments are tied to their originating jurisdiction and do not change cross‑border. In principle, their tokenisation is more feasible - sometimes even without an SPV or trustee - but not freely. In Germany, for example, it requires a licensed crypto‑securities registrar and cannot simply be “coded and released” without observing regulatory requirements.

Dear crypto community - please be crystal clear what you mean by RWA tokenisation:

🔸 Physical‑asset ownership: borderless tokenisation is largely impossible without jurisdictional lock‑in.

🔸 Trustee obligation or SPV‑share: more workable, but riskier. No direct ownership!

🔸 Stocks, bonds and similar instruments: generally more feasible, yet still bound by the originating jurisdiction’s rules - and in Germany, by the eWpG and the crypto‑securities registrar regime.