Tokenize Everything, But Can You Sell It? RWA Liquidity Challenges and the Road Ahead

TL;DR

This paper examines the liquidity challenges faced by tokenized real-world assets, analyzing market data and barriers, and proposing pathways to enhance tradability and market efficiency in this emerging sector.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into liquidity issues of RWA tokens and suggests structural improvements to foster better market microstructure and tradability.

Findings

Most RWA tokens have low trading volumes and long holding periods.

Limited secondary market activity and investor participation are common.

Structural barriers include regulation, custody, valuation, and trading venue issues.

Abstract

The tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) promises to transform financial markets by enabling fractional ownership, global accessibility, and programmable settlement of traditionally illiquid assets such as real estate, private credit, and government bonds. While technical progress has been rapid, with over \$25 billion in tokenized RWAs brought on-chain as of 2025, liquidity remains a critical bottleneck. This paper investigates the gap between tokenization and tradability, drawing on recent academic research and market data from platforms such as RWA.xyz. We document that most RWA tokens exhibit low trading volumes, long holding periods, and limited investor participation, despite their potential for 24/7 global markets. Through case studies of tokenized real estate, private credit, and tokenized treasury funds, we present empirical liquidity observations that reveal low transfer activity, limited active address counts, and minimal secondary trading for most tokenized asset classes. Next, we categorize the structural barriers to liquidity, including regulatory gating, custodial concentration, whitelisting, valuation opacity, and lack of decentralized trading venues. Finally, we propose actionable pathways to improve liquidity, ranging from hybrid market structures and collateral-based liquidity to transparency enhancements and compliance innovation. Our findings contribute to the growing discourse on digital asset market microstructure and highlight that realizing the liquidity potential of RWAs requires coordinated progress across legal, technical, and institutional domains.