What are real-world assets?

An issuer holds the real asset inside a legal wrapper, usually a fund or a special purpose vehicle, and issues tokens that represent a claim on it. The token moves on-chain like any other. The thing backing it does not.

Tokenized US Treasuries were the first category to get big. BlackRock's BUIDL (launched March 2024), Franklin Templeton's BENJI and Ondo's funds pay on-chain holders short-term government yield. Tokenized stocks followed in 2025 with xStocks and Robinhood's Stock Tokens. Private credit, gold and real estate are the other busy corners.

Code cannot remove off-chain risk. A token is only as good as its issuer, custodian, legal claim and redemption process, and a smart contract audit checks none of those. Most RWA tokens also limit who can hold them through allowlists or country rules. So they do not behave like a permissionless token you can send anywhere, which is the part that catches people out.

A DAO with $5 million in stablecoins moves $3 million into a tokenized Treasury fund for yield. It can redeem back to stablecoins, usually within a day or two, but only through the issuer's process and only while the fund runs normally.

Also called: RWA, RWAs, tokenized assets, tokenized real-world assets.

Only one RWA category makes it onto a Cashboard board: tokenized stocks and ETFs. The Tokenized stocks widget shows eight xStocks against the share each tracks, and the Robinhood stock tokens widget ranks Robinhood Chain's tokens, gold and Treasury ETFs such as GLD and SGOV among them, pricing the top eight against the underlying. Tokenized Treasury funds such as BUIDL, private credit and real estate have no view.

• Tokenized stocks
• Robinhood stock tokens
• Stocks

• Tokenized stocks
• xStocks
• Stock Tokens
• Yield-bearing stablecoin