Tokenized RWA usage should be judged asset by asset, says Falcon exec

Falcon Finance’s chief RWA officer has questioned whether low onchain activity signals weak demand across a tokenized asset market valued at $38.86 billion in a September snapshot, arguing that funds bought for income should be assessed differently from products built for lending.

Artem Tolkachev, chief RWA officer at Falcon Finance, told crypto.news that the amount issued onchain measures a different part of the market from whether holders can use their assets in financial applications.

Responding to Castle Labs’ research on tokenized real-world assets, the executive said an asset’s intended purpose should determine how its usage is judged. For products bought to earn income, he said, holding the token can be the expected outcome.

“A Treasury fund that pays its yield and redeems on time is doing its job while sitting in a wallet.”

In Tolkachev’s assessment, low activity becomes a concern when an issuer has built and priced a product for borrowing, yet holders leave it unused after launch.

Tokenized RWA utility depends on the product’s purpose

Castle Labs’ Sep. 14 report, “Beyond Tokenisation: Making RWAs Useful Onchain,” argued that tokenization platforms need to give holders practical ways to trade, borrow, and move assets between venues.

The research identified more than $15.9 billion in tokenized U.S. Treasuries, alongside $4.9 billion in commodities, $3.6 billion in active strategies, $2.56 billion in asset-backed credit and $2.52 billion in stocks. Castle Labs said new listings add less value when the assets lack deep liquidity or connections to financial applications.

Separately, a Sep. 15 report citing RWA.xyz put distributed asset value at $38.86 billion. The same coverage cited Pantera Capital’s classification of 77.6% of tracked assets as wrappers, making that percentage a measure of product structure rather than the share of dollar value sitting idle.

For Tolkachev, the Treasury category helps explain why large issued balances can coexist with limited movement. Most holders bought those products to hold and earn, he said, much as investors in traditional finance buy some instruments to keep until maturity.

The executive said an asset faces additional requirements once its intended role includes moving between platforms, securing loans or trading against available buyers. Under his approach, a fund held for income and a token used as collateral require different tests of success.

Lending requires prices and exits that work during stress

When a token becomes loan collateral, Tolkachev said lenders must account for the difference between blockchain trading hours and the hours of the underlying market.

A token may trade around the clock while the assets backing it follow a separate schedule, he said. The lender therefore needs to determine how much collateral it could sell during the least favorable market window and set the loan size accordingly.

In his comments, the executive also called for lenders to recognize when a quoted price is out of date, rather than treating it as a current valuation.

“This is solvable, but it has to be designed into the product. Tokenization alone does not do it.”

A Sep. 4 report on Falcon’s RWA collateral tests detailed how the company examines legal claims, redemption terms, secondary-market liquidity, price feeds and credit quality before accepting an asset.

In that earlier interview, Tolkachev said Falcon checks how quickly seized collateral can become cash and how much value it could recover under stressed conditions. Its review includes the token holder’s claim if the issuer fails and whether another buyer exists when redemption is unavailable.

The same report recorded $3.79 billion deployed in protocols out of a $34.6 billion tokenized RWA market, using DeFiLlama data. At that snapshot, JAAA and reUSD had utilization above 97%, while BUIDL, BENJI and USYC each stood below 1% in the applications measured.

RWA lending deposits have grown despite weaker DeFi balances

A Sep. 24 report on RWA deposits tripling provided another view of actual use, drawing on research from CoinShares and Token Terminal.

Between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026, deposits of tokenized assets across lending protocols and decentralized exchanges increased from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion, according to the research. Total DeFi deposits fell about 15% over the same period.

CoinShares’ Aug. 6 Hybrid Finance report covered distributed assets that could move outside their issuing platform. Its main analysis excluded networks such as Canton and Provenance.

According to the study, tokenized Treasury and multi-strategy products supplied much of the collateral, with JTRSY, BUIDL and sUSDS among the largest contributors. Private-credit products included JAAA, syrupUSDT, syrupUSDC and PRIME.

CoinShares said yield-bearing collateral was concentrated on Aave, Morpho and Kamino, where investors could keep earning income on some assets while borrowing against them. Ethereum hosted almost 70% of measured RWA deposits, according to the report.

U.S. securities have entered collateral and settlement workflows

Institutional use also appeared in a Sep. 20 report covering tokenized securities in settlement, including production transactions processed through the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.

DTCC announced that more than 30 firms participated in its July 15 initiative, which converted securities held at the Depository Trust Company into tokens for actual transactions.

According to DTCC, the transactions included U.S. Treasury repo trades, securities lending, collateral pledges, equity settlement and central-counterparty margin workflows. The company said the conversions took place on its private Besu network and the public Canton network.

For holders of U.S. securities, DTCC said the tokenized assets retain the investor protections, entitlements and ownership rights of their traditional forms. Its service allows DTC participants to convert securities between conventional and tokenized versions and deliver the tokens to participant wallets.

DTCC said the July transactions preceded the tokenization service’s scheduled October 2026 launch and followed an SEC no-action letter allowing DTC to operate a tokenization service for assets in its custody.