Real-World Asset Tokenization | Boston Blockchain Week 2026

Thank you so much. And first of all, I want to tell everyone how wonderful it's been to speak to people that actually know what's going on. [laughter] It's It's crazy. It's crazy. So, we have an esteemed panel.

Very excited to get a good discussion going. And by the way, I don't know if you're allowed to ask questions, but I think it's important for these I don't know how much time you get to actually talk to these types, but please ask questions at any time. Raise your hand if there's something we're talking about that's over your head possibly or too much to handle because for a lot of people it really is. So let's start maybe with Mosen if you'd like to kind of give us an idea of what your whole thoughts around real world assets are at this juncture. What are you thinking?

What have you built? Where do you think we are in the life cycle of real world assets?

So my name is Mosen Massud. I'm the founder and CEO for AC Crew. Um to give you a little bit of background on my thoughts on real world assets. Crew actually started off as a real estate tokenization platform back in 2018. Uh about three and a half years ago, we pivoted from real estate tokenization to true truly utilizing blockchain as infrastructure.

Uh and utilizing it for day-to-day operations which are required for running funds for running uh real world opera uh real world assets per se. So whether it is real estate or it is a hedge fund or it is a venture fund or any kind of alternative investment essentially and what we realized is that there were a lot of inefficiencies in existing systems which are getting solved by the system that we built for real estate tokenization only. Now my my perspective is that real world asset adoption that we talk about that doesn't exist today per se is purely because we look at tokenization as a different kind of asset. I think tokenization is the infrastructure behind existing assets. A security remains a security and a building remains a building.

An asset remains an asset. Just because it's tokenized doesn't change the asset in itself. And so you've got to use the technology for the benefit that it can provide. So utilizing smart contracts for automating those transactions, utilizing those tokens for util for the immutable nature that they have and the long-term data storage that they it can somewhat I shouldn't say data storage but information stories that it can provide date and time of the transaction that it took place on a public ledger that can be translated through a key on a on a private network is where the benefit really lies and that's what where real world asset tokenization head towards

and that's exactly what we've been speaking about all day long and talking to Chris Russell for half of the day has been really interesting to understand what is that mechanism how do you build that in to a full working life cycle I don't well platform however we want to describe it but Chris I love the fact that he said Lisa my job is really stressful. And I was like, that's great. You're a CISO and you're the one manning and taking care of the operational flows. So, with that being said, why don't you describe your view right now of where we're at and what you think of um what's coming next.

Yeah, I think uh real world assets has been a a topic that people have heard for a long time. There's been a lot of promise behind it, a lot of expectations, and I think for the most part, it's been a little bit of a letown for a lot of people that have like looking for it to really until now anyway uh until, you know, for it to take off. And one of those reasons in my opinion is that a real world asset needs to be uh dealt with, handled, and interacted with differently than just a bitcoin. Um, no one wants to just look in their wallet and see I own a hundred million dollars of an address and it's just listed in a wallet and it's inert and it doesn't do anything interesting and it doesn't offer any other insight and there's no information I can click into and so the whole infrastructure around it everyone's rushing to tokenize you know whether it's real estate or IP or a sports team or whatever it is I don't think they ever thought down step like stepped back and thought out about like how much are we using the technology we have to actually deliver a full product as opposed to just the tokenization piece, which is the easiest part. So, I think we're starting to see, especially with real estate and things like mineral rights and intellectual property, we're getting more data on chain.

We're getting more interactive things on chain. And what I'd really love to see is for the wallet, like for wallets for retail investors, I think suck right now. I think, you know, for for um you know, companies that pay lots of money to have wallet key management, they're fine. But the average investor who's doing self-custody, they don't have a good experience. And that all needs to get resolved.

We need to have the ability for people to look at full information on a fund. You know, click into perspectuses, see images of property, if it's, you know, if it's IP, you know, you know, contracts of, you know, who's licensing it, expected returns, all that needs to be on chain. And it needs to be very uh interactive, very interesting and the wallet needs to be a place where people can get all this as opposed to pivoting from their one line item and then going on the internet and doing a bunch of research and then feeling exciting excited about their investment. So I think there's been a lot of promise that hasn't been lived up to and I think we're just now starting to see that as companies are putting on chain. They are making the experience more interactive and they are you know giving investors the data around the investment not just a you know inert inert token.

Perfect. And I think Matt you have some really good insights. We only got to chat for a little bit but I think you see the broader bigger picture from all the different projects you've been working on. Do you want to describe a little bit about what you're seeing from your perspective and you know the positive traction we're getting and and where do you see us going in the near term?

Absolutely. Thank you again so much. Uh Matthew Snyder, I'm an independent consultant with Block 3 Strategy Group. I've managed a number of uh crypto hedge funds and you know serve as an investment adviser. So when there was a whole bunch of people you kept saying um this isn't financial advice, this isn't financial advice.

Like I went and got the 65 credentialed uh I've I've run my own book of business. I've worked with investment adviserss currently to help them help clients better understand and deal with digital assets. uh be okay with putting your assets securely on chain and also investing in private placements, private um opportunities that could be tokenized um using the platforms that are run by um companies like these. And from a from a user perspective, these are investors who are looking to say like how do we access new deals, new opportunities that might be uh tokenized Ferrari or a Monae or a low-income housing property with tax credits. Like there's a really cool way that we can look at this an opportunity perspective, but I wrote an article earlier this year called tokenization's missing buyers.

And the problem really boils down to supply of the capabilities of this technology outpacing the demand of people needing the technology. We don't have this insatiable need to get online like figure out how to get something tokenized because we're not quite sure, you know, we're peeking over the fence from an investor perspective about what this means. And so, you know, you look at something like what motion has been built in 2018. We were talking about this backstage like he knew tokenization of assets was going to be a big deal almost 10 years ago and now people are like, "Oh, I finally get it." And so, it's the the snowball has started to continue rolling and it's going to continue more and more and more.

And that's why you see all these charts of like RWA usage, stable coin token usage, like all these things are just asymtoically going up and to the right. And I don't think that that's going to slow down. and the to and the technology is certainly just going to get better.

Yeah. And Mosen, your idea on how you think the political side will or will not play a role. I don't want to bring that up at all, but I do think there was a little bit of negative negativity on the panels before us. Do you see that hindering you or do you see we're we're kind of getting over the mountain and coming down the other side and now that so many things are falling in place with even if clarity is not passed do you see the traction building like we're feeling it right now? I think um irrespective of where the government stands or or where the Senate and the House stand on passing the Clarity Act, there's there's enough momentum from a corporate adoption p perspective and we're only going to see mass adoption once we get real institution day-to-day utilization of the technology.

Retail investors will eventually uh hop on, will eventually become the end users for it. Uh and and again back to what I said earlier, I think if you're going to utilize tokenization as the underlying technology piece and you're going to have it part of your day-to-day operations, whether your K1 is produced utilizing tokenized uh equity interest within a uh an LLC or you know how your fund admin calculations run through a smart contract as opposed to um you running on an Excel sheet or or some archaic system as it usually runs today. Uh once you see all of those automations coming into play, you're seeing a lot more adoption coming in. And 99% of our clientele today, the end users, the end investors within those funds don't even know that their assets are tokenized. And that's where you're really going to see that ramp up in uh in the adoption irrespective of the regulatory uh regime around it.

Once you really start utilizing it as for the benefits that it offers for the efficiencies that it offers uh you know we were talking about backstage we were talking about TAS and how you know how today your TA run on an archaic system. I think that's exactly what what how inefficient that that entire process is and once you start bringing those cor corporate functions on chain once you start bringing the entire reporting piece on chain it just streamlines every aspect of it the auditabil the auditability of it the uh speed of uh of it it is it is something that completely not only reduces the cost and increases the efficiency of it but but it really changes the enduser experience from it and that's where you're going to start seeing a a lot more adoption.

That brings us to stable tokens. Do you think it was just the proliferation of stable tokens coming to market in the last few months like really pushing for all kinds of stable tokens that will benefit these market?

I think stable token adoption is going to be

part and parcel of the payments rail or the financial rail more than anything else. Uh Okay. And it is the market is going to consolidate this, you know, super large number of stable tokens that that have that we've seen come out more recently. It that that entire piece is going to consolidate into a few uh key players who are going to be uh functioning globally and not just in a single market. Some of our clients for instance have end investors in Singapore or in UAE or Saudi Arabia or even in markets like Kuwait where any kind of crypto assets are not allowed be it stable coins be it uh tokenized assets so your international settlement is going to run towards those stable stable tokens for our European settlements we have to use USDC because of their micica compliance can't use other tokens so that's where you're really going to start seeing consolidation within the industry and I think this whole mushroom effect that's happening right now is going to kind of die down into a few key players

interesting Matt I mean I'm sorry Do you agree?

Yeah. Um, stable coins have definitely sped up the the process of um, institutions being able to uh, handle digital assets because the settlement piece has always been the part that's slow anyway. And if you have to wait for the cash leg, then tokenizing doesn't get that much faster anyway. So being able to actually offer real time settlement, uh, things that are more 247, that's when, you know, institutions say, well, now it's worth it to actually invest in technology. So that part is key.

And and just going back to the transfer agent piece, which I think is, you know, really important. It's a it's not one of the ones that people talk about a lot, but it's a real cornerstone of securities and whatnot. Um, you know, a lot of people come into the space and they think about tokenization and they they build a tokenization platform. They want their own ERC 3643. They want their own protocol.

They want their thing. They want to do all the different, you know, all the things on chain. And um and not a lot of that's actually come to fruition because they came at it from the wrong perspective in my opinion. We need more people building things like transfer agents that are for the modern, you know, century. And there's just not a lot of that out there.

And if you don't have that, it makes it very hard to do corporate actions the right way. You can have a a token that does a thousand things. It's going to be a lot of friction if they don't have a good transfer agent that can work with it. And that's been a real disconnect, I think, in this space. And so if you want to start a business, go build transfer agent digitally native.

Uh I know we built one and it's been a gamecher because every organization out there who has a transfer agent that cannot do this is looking for a way to do this. And part of the way we're going to get there is what I say training wheels. You have to start from completely off-chain securities to fully digital and everything in between and kind of give the people that mechanism. But going back to stable coins, that's part of the method that allows um people to move securities in and out of different positions that much quicker and not wait for the cash leg, the clearing piece. That that's kind of held it all up until now.

So between people looking at digitally native transfer agents getting the clearing on on chain with stable coins now is what why we're seeing all the major financial players finally fully jumping in because they actually see the benefit as opposed to this promise you know if you tokenize it they will come and and the liquidity never came.

Perfect. Matt, what do you think on the broker dealer side and some of the parts that you've been looking at and also dissecting to say how do we modernize these entities quickly or as quick as possible?

Well, and it was really nice to have somebody from the SEC here sort of talking about how they're seeing these transfer agents or broker dealer rules now playing a part in the tokenization of real world assets. A lot of these assets can be complex. Uh there's custody involved, there's recurring payments, there's dividends, there's payouts. There's a lot of things to be considerate about when you have to build this stuff out. And being able to understand regulatory, this is the playground we're in.

These are the rules we have makes it very challenging at this point. But one of the things that Chris mentions about the transfer agent which is super important is that like this information is available and the the the moat here is for regulatory agencies or people who have regulatory credentials like a broker dealer to be able to go offer these services and there's this arbitrage opportunity or first mover advantage to be able to do this when you get the network effect of people on your platform because it's a service you provide and they're kind of going well we really need this right now who's available and you only a few people who can raise their hand and say yeah we can do it and also remember that like you know exactly to Chris's point this is a legacy institution for a reason you have a lot of really really rich people who own these businesses who have kind of an oligopoly if not you know a few of them like a small group of them cartel some might call it uh I didn't say that it's not a cartel probably uh but you know they get together and they say ah we don't want to change the rules we don't want to adopt it if it ain't broke don't fix it and I think one of the coolest parts about being a permissionless world and permissionless economy is that we can do this stuff. And that's what you're seeing with like Vlad from Robin Hood saying like, well, we're going to tokenize part of these assets. We're going to tokenize stocks and we're going to be able to link them to real world um backed assets. So, it's very cool to see what's going to happen, but I don't think these legacy institutions are going to be very excited for very long.

And there's going to be a lot of like, you know, hatinand, how do you, you know, hook up the blockchain? you know, just like we would have to plug into the internet, they're going to come to you and say like, "How do I, you know, make this work?"

Yeah, that makes sense. [clears throat] Coming from Ohio or living now in Ohio, very progressive state from everything everyone I've been talking to, do you have any insight on RWA's adoption in Ohio particularly?

So, Ohio was one of the first states after Wyoming to uh test out a um to test out deeds on chain in Franklin County. Uh if I'm not wrong, that was in 2019, so precoid. Uh we've been very progressive when it comes to legislation. We've been very supportive of building out the right infrastructure uh from a regulatory perspective, but implementation at the government level is not there yet. So they it and again they're supportive of it.

we have the right regulators or the right uh legislators in place but I don't see mass adoption happening uh from a true government perspective as yet.

That's interesting point because I've I just recently spent some time in Cleveland was very surprised how few people were aware that there was actually traction happening. So from your perspective, Chris, and what you're trying to move forward with, do you want to share some more of what T0 is looking at that will get that adoption? I mean, I know we're all talking about RWA, which to me is the most exciting piece and will unleash that liquidity if we get, you know, society to start to accept it. Right.

So the the friction in in blockchain started with the technology piece. It's private keys. We're not even good at passwords as society. And as a CISO, I can say that confidently. So, private keys was the first uh hurdle.

And telling the average person, hey, there's this new way you can make money. You have to download this really long thing and there's a cphrase and you have to save that somewhere, but don't save it on the internet, but don't put it on a piece of paper, but save it somewhere safe, but no one can ever see it, but don't ever lose it. And all your money is going to depend on it. Uh there was just just, you know, it wasn't the most smooth thing for the average person. And you know over time that's been made a little bit easier, a little bit more frictionless.

And so I think at the at the bigger scale I know what we're trying to do is remove the friction where the blockchain is happening in the background and it doesn't even matter.

Yeah,

it's just another database. It is just another distributed way of saving information and um and yeah, there's a wallet involved, but you have to see that less and less. You don't necessarily need to look that up. Can you go on a block explorer and go look at your wallet? Absolutely.

But but we're going to present it in ways where you don't necessarily have to do that as much. So reducing the friction is the point where we're at now. And although we've come across we've we've gotten past the hurdle of private keys and some of the uh different parts of the chains and connecting um we still have a lot of walled gardens. We still have a lot of these are my clients. Those are your clients.

This is these are my four assets. Those are your five, you know, those are your hundred, but they're not tokenized and none of them can co-mingle. And that's not good for investors. And we're just starting to see now, I think, at least in the broker dealers, this idea of like, why are we all having these little pools of non-liquidity separately? Let's create bigger pools with liquidity.

That's better for the investor. And when the investor is happy, everyone makes money. It's the whole point of investing is to make money, right? And if we're not making people money, that's kind of defeats the purpose. So, um, people opening up their I feel like it's like, uh, back in elementary school when it's like, "Hey, do you want to come see my forte built?"

We're like, "Yeah, let's go see that." People are building these projects and they're like, "Hey, I built this really cool thing on blockchain." It does, it only does one piece, but I think it's good for, you know, for the collective and other people like, "Yeah, you know what? I built something else. Let's like kind of put those two together.

It's, you know, call it a JV, call it a partnership, call whatever, but we're kind of better together." And now the institutions are throwing some money behind it and the banks are throwing some money and they're building some cool things and it's all getting very smooth. Now the investor can kind of come in and very effortlessly go from a US bank to a broker dealer to a crypto wallet to something else. And that's the experience I think they were promised long time ago that they're just starting to get now.

I got a quick comment. So I think the flaw was in the question that you asked and and more so because you mentioned liquidity at the end, right?

Unfortunately, real world tokenization to date the promise has been or the holy grail has been secondary market liquidity. That's the problem. It is that's not the purpose of real world tokenization. It has to be used as a utility. It has to be used for the benefits it has.

The liquidity that you get is quicker settlement. The liquidity that you get is collateralization. The liquidity that you get is the efficiency, not secondary market liquidity. The asset remains the asset. Just because you get a smart contract in between, just because the asset is tokenized, what does a smart contract do?

It's just like a vending machine, a perfectly functioning vending machine where I put in a buck, I press A1, and I'll always get my Coke zero. That's all that a smart contract does. So, use it for that purpose. Don't use it for, oh, this is going to get me to that holy grail of liquidity. That's not the end goal.

And that's been the biggest hurdle in uh in tokeniz real world asset tokenization adoption. A uh A6Z recently wrote out an article their crypto practice did about how real world asset tokenization has reached $30 billion in adoption. It's like that is absolutely incorrect. You know just looking at our book of business where every asset is tokenized from a utility perspective. We've got a single client with over 200 billion of assets on our platform.

So well you know you can't use you can't measure secondary market you know assets that are available on a secondary market to measure what what has been tokenized use it for the as you said use it for the utility and the benefit it has use it for removing that friction and that's where you really see the benefits of it

I think you brought up some really good points if we look at traditional banks they're not ready some of them think they can be ready very quickly they think oh well exactly as you mentioned we'll switch a switch and then we'll be on let's talk about the new agentic banks that are coming to market and are moving the space fast. So I'm wondering how that race will play out and maybe Matt you can kind of describe what you're seeing. So, one of the things that I come back to, a lot of people say, "Oh, as an investment adviser, AI is just gonna I'm just not I'm not going to talk to you when I move $5 million into XYZ stock. I'm just going to ask, you know, robo AI." Uh, the truth is, um, I could learn how to do heart surgery, open heart surgery from AI, but I'm not a doctor.

They're not going to let me in there, right? And you shouldn't let your financial adviser like let you believe that you should just be making all your own investment decisions if with millions and millions of dollars. And so Agentic AI is going to be a tool that your adviserss use to help provide better analytics and research and ways that you should think and consider your investments and maybe prioritize tax opportunities and the like and make recommendations about private placements that might be tokenized or things like that. But ultimately, when we talk about agentic banking, there still has to be some really big trust in putting a whole lot of money into an agent that's going to all of a sudden figure out that you can get some alpha because I can do some back tests and tell you that I found a sharp ratio and like who can validate that? There's some agentic organizations right now uh one of which I'm working with that are you know building prediction markets and building prediction models that are you know state-of-the-art and they still quite aren't that good.

So I always come down to this question about the efficient market hypothesis which is if everybody has an agent and all these agents have alpha your alpha diminishes and they're no better than just picking the S&P 500 index. So, congratulations. You still need an investment advisor because maybe you want to figure out how to deal with your kids, you know, uh, fund for college or whatever the case may be. It's just going to be a tool. And I think that it's important for people to not recognize that like there's an emotional connection, too.

You know, I like being your financial therapist. You come to me and say, I really want to buy the yacht. I'm like, don't buy the yacht. Buy this boat and buy the car or something like that, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's a real human connection that goes into managing money and it's not just going to go away because agents show up.

I love the enthusiasm of this panel. I mean, if you can see, we're all excited because we're here finally at the point where things can actually start moving. So with that being said, who would like to kind of sum up or I'd like all three of you to sum up your again how quickly do you think uh how much um momentum is there right now? Are we going into like some crazy economic cycle with AI and everything making it very convoluted?

You're in the hot seat, Chris.

Yeah. Um, so I think AI has sped up uh the tech piece and I think a lot of people are rushing to get into tokenization from the tech perspective and and my opinion is they're they're just not going to make it because the mo right now is the the the the market expertise um the licenses uh and and the relationships with the existing financial organizations. Um, don't think you can just spin up Clawude um, tokenize some, you know, create a tokenization engine and someone's gonna, you know, throw some money at it because you call it AI tokenization. It's just not going to really work. But if you're already an existing anyone in the space and you've got a room full of, you know, crusty market veterans, get them in front of building stuff with AI.

they they don't have to be coders, but just download and learn every mistake that they've learned over the years because that's what makes products valuable. That's what makes products heart, you know, hearty and safe and whatever. So, um I guess I think we should embrace AI, but we need to embrace it from expertise, not from I can build anything just because, you know, it's smarter than me. Start with smart people. Use that tool.

Expand on your on your moat. Uh but don't think tech because everyone can build a new pretty UI now. Anyone can build whatever. That's not going to move the needle. So don't focus on those things.

Fantastic. Well, we have one minute left if anyone would like to share.

Um I think the adoption is going to be more and more so from the institutional side before we start seeing it on on the end retail side. I think and we're seeing that happen with companies like Ona working with large financial institutions with TZ with uh all the larger players in the space working with big banks with uh large institutional players be it wisdom tree be it um State Street be it you name it be it Fidelity they're all entering the space more so for again onchain collateralization and repo benefits. They're they're bringing it onchain for faster settlements. They're bringing it onchain for accuracy of of those settlements. And that's where we're really going to start seeing uh or that's what that's what's leading to a lot more tokenization adoption moving forward as well.

And we're going to start seeing it more and more on our day-to-day operations, whether it is for the K1s that you see and what really generates that information, whether it's the 1099s that that you receive uh and where those capital stacks are being managed. and you're really going to start seeing a lot of adoption on the tokenization side more so from a utility perspective is is where I stand.

Well, we have incredible expertise. So, please reach out and I'll let you finish out. Matt, no, feel free.

Just the as your resident investment advisor, I will say one of the benefits of what they're building is that just because an investment has a tokenization aspect to it or just because it's on the blockchain does not make it a good investment. Please do your research. The genius of what they're building is that they sell the picks and shovels that enable you to get access to it. So do your due diligence when looking at these kinds of things. The SEC does not approve anything ever, right?

If if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

Thank you, Ian, so much for inviting everybody here. On to the next