How RWAs have matured this cycle

Apollo’s Christine Moy explained how the “velocity” of innovation in crypto has led to the evolution of RWAs

article-image

Christine Moy, Apollo Partner leading Digital Assets, Data & AI Strategy | DAS 2022 by Blockworks

share

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


If the first version of real-world assets was akin to NFTs, the second version’s more like memecoins (just because of liquidity), Gauntlet’s Tarun Chitra explained on this morning’s Empire podcast. 

 ”It’s a lot easier to deal with composability-wise, and you don’t have to build a whole separate stack. NFTs had to build their own total separate stack, and then once people stopped using them, that stack also kind of fell. And so I think being able to have this kind of liquidity aspect to RWAs was just not there,” Chitra said. 

The episode focuses — as you might be able to tell from the above quote and the recent announcements from these three — on the tokenization of private credit with Securitize’s Carlos Domingo and Apollo’s Christine Moy.

For Securitize and Apollo, this represents another step in a partnership that began earlier this year. But to Chitra’s earlier point, RWAs have come a long way. 

“ The fact that we are making traditional assets interoperable with open architecture is the key point,” Moy explained. In the earlier versions, Moy’s work was focused on “bespoke systems that were behind walled gardens.”

We all know that one of the downsides of the so-called traditional way of doing things at big financial institutions is that everything innovative takes time to develop. Part of it is just the process. The other, compliance. 

But as Moy said,  ”the velocity of innovation in the crypto space is significant, because what you have is open source code, open architecture, that’s well understood. You have smart contract libraries that have already been audited, and are composable.”

In the late April announcement, Domingo said its RWA strategy is an example of “institutional-grade DeFi we’ve been working to build: making tokenized securities not only accessible, but compelling to crypto-native investors seeking strategies that objectively outpace their traditional counterparts.”

To put it simply, the door is now open for institutional investors to earn some “enhanced yields” that were previously off the table. 

According to Domingo, the buyers right now are pretty crypto-native. 

“I think for today, we’re focusing all the products. All the customers we have today for ACRED…for anything…are all crypto native people.” These native customers are accessing the “products as a better way, [a] safer way of generating returns, as opposed to some much higher-risk strategies that they can still do in crypto that involve dealing with other types of assets,” Domingo explained. 

It may not be wholly accurate to compare this market to memecoins. But, I think they do have something in common: They’re here to stay and could take even more market share as they mature (if memecoins even can mature). 


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (19).png

Research

Suilend has grown into the top money market and liquid staking provider on Sui. STEAMM, Suilend’s Superfluid AMM, presents a compelling avenue for growing market share within Sui’s DEX landscape and revenue generation for the protocol. Suilend’s multi-product suite position it well for owning market share across key verticals. While current metrics across the Sui ecosystem are likely inflated due to Sui Foundation incentive programs, SEND trades at amongst the lowest multiples in the lend/borrow sector, suggesting that a bull case for continued growth in the ecosystem may be mispriced.

article-image

Silk Road founder Ulbricht made a triumphant return to the Bitcoin Conference, 10 years on from sentencing

article-image

A Blockworks Research report looked at who could take up some of the marketshare in the launchpad space

article-image

Business-to-business stablecoin payments are on the rise, per a report from Artemis, Dragonfly and Castle Island

article-image

Crypto continues to do its thing: incentivizing behavior

article-image

Kraken will soon offer Backed ‘xStocks’ as Solana tokens

article-image

In a unanimous decision, the US Court of International Trade has ruled that Trump’s IEEPA tariffs are unlawful