万字长文：从 1996 说起，谁在铺下一代资本市场的底层轨道

Introduction: The Part of the Iceberg Underwater

This article is from Tiger Research. What the market calls asset tokenization is only the tip of the iceberg. The real transformation is happening underwater, where the multi-trillion-dollar underlying rails of traditional finance are being rebuilt.

Many observers equate tokenizing U.S. Treasury bonds on-chain with the entire RWA market, seeing only the surface. The real transition isn't in the visible digitization of assets, but in the comprehensive reconstruction of the financial infrastructure that has long remained hidden underwater: the settlement systems, clearing layers, and liquidity networks – the underlying rails supporting every transaction.

The scale is no longer negligible. According to Broadridge, its DLR platform processes approximately $7.7 trillion in on-chain repo transactions monthly; DTCC has also entered the Treasury tokenization space. Neither is a pilot experiment; both are live operational components of the financial market structure. The Hong Kong government issued HKD 6 billion in digital green bonds through HSBC Orion, immediately deploying them as repo collateral, showcasing a future where issuance and circulation merge into a single, seamless process.

The infrastructure layer for new financial standards is being assembled right now. Institutions joining at this moment will participate in defining this architecture itself before latecomers arrive.

1. The Internet of 1996 and the RWA Market

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote in his 2026 annual shareholder letter, "We believe tokenization today is roughly where the internet was in 1996."

1996 was an inflection point. The internet existed, but most companies stayed on the sidelines. Only 26% of the Fortune 500 had integrated online operations at the time. When early adopters demonstrated success, others rushed in, but by then, the pioneers had already secured their positions.

The RWA tokenization market is at a similar juncture. Many institutions are still watching, but leading examples have emerged. The most prominent is BlackRock's BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund), an on-chain tokenized fund holding U.S. Treasuries. Launched in March 2024, it expanded to seven blockchains within 18 months. According to rwa.xyz data, the fund's market cap grew to approximately $2.5 billion.

Scale alone doesn't capture this shift. The market has moved beyond simply putting real-world Treasuries on-chain. New financial services are layering on top of issued assets. Multiple DeFi protocols use BUIDL as a base asset, and Binance officially accepted BUIDL as trading collateral.

According to rwa.xyz, as of May 2026, distributed assets issued on-chain totaled approximately $34 billion, more than 20 times the $1.5 billion at the beginning of 2020. Including represented assets (where physical assets are custodied and ownership recorded on-chain), the total scale reaches approximately $360 billion.

2. The RWA Market Has Started

Asset tokenization isn't just swapping existing financial products for digital forms. It changes the fundamental way products operate, including settlement speed, post-trade infrastructure, and the entire processing lifecycle from start to finish. This approach doesn't aim to replace old systems but to build faster, more precise new rails on top of them.

Most discussions about RWA tokenization stop at BlackRock's BUIDL. BUIDL is indeed a landmark case for the RWA market, but a single example can't answer why tokenization matters.

Finance is much more than bond issuance. The repo market, securities settlement, and capital raising each carry different structural inefficiencies, and the value tokenization can unlock varies accordingly. To understand why tokenization matters, we need to examine these sub-markets in their respective contexts.

2.1 Short-Term Funding Market (Repo)

Repurchase agreements are the defining transaction in the short-term funding market. An institution lends cash against bonds as collateral, and upon maturity, repays principal plus interest to retrieve the bonds. Most contracts are overnight, collateral is safe, rates are low, and transactions are routine.

Problem: Limited Operating Hours. The repo market only operates during system working hours. Settlement happens once a day on business days, and stops completely on weekends and holidays. But risk doesn't take breaks. If adverse news breaks over a weekend, mark-to-market losses accumulate while settlement is impossible. When markets open Monday, the entire weekend's accumulated exposure hits as a single margin call. Responding immediately isn't realistic: selling bonds or raising cash via repo takes time. The only solution is pre-hoarding cash reserves, capital forced idle precisely because the settlement infrastructure can't run continuously.

Solution: DvP Mechanism in On-Chain Repo. On-chain repo solves this structurally, centered on the DvP (Delivery versus Payment) mechanism. It works like paying at a checkout counter: collateral and cash are exchanged simultaneously, making it structurally impossible for one party to transfer first.

In practice, the party seeking funds posts the amount, interest rate, and maturity conditions. A counterparty accepts. Both parties deposit their assets into a smart contract – a digital agreement that executes automatically when conditions are met. The borrower deposits tokenized bonds, the lender deposits tokenized cash. Once both confirm receipt, the swap completes automatically.

Tokenized bonds and stablecoins move on-chain 24/7. Without relying on old settlement infrastructure, collateral can move on a Friday afternoon or Sunday morning, eliminating the constraint of system operating hours. Settlement frequency changes too. Manual confirmation under old systems limits settlement to once daily; smart contracts trigger margin calls and settlement automatically the moment a position shows loss. With no time gap, there's no need to pre-position excess cash reserves.

Case Study: Broadridge DLR.

Broadridge is a global capital markets infrastructure company, processing settlement and clearing for banks and brokerages via technology. Its DLR (Distributed Ledger Repo) platform is built on the Canton Network's underlying blockchain for distributed ledger repo transactions.

Being blockchain-based, DLR is free from the operating hour constraints of old settlement infrastructure. Collateral movement and settlement are executable on weekends and public holidays. Repo transactions can be initiated and closed at any time of day, structurally mitigating risks arising from limited business hours. Smart contracts also automate the entire repo lifecycle, reducing settlement failures and disputes while improving collateral reuse efficiency.

As of April 2026, DLR's monthly settlement volume reached $7.7 trillion, with a daily average of $368 billion. Global banks including HSBC, UBS, and Société Générale participate in the platform.

2.2 Securities Settlement Infrastructure

Securities settlement is the post-trade phase where the buyer delivers funds and the seller delivers securities. T refers to the transaction date. Standard practice settles on T+1 or T+2, meaning funds move at least one to two days after the trade.

Problem 1: Settlement Delay & Counterparty Risk. A real estate transaction is a useful analogy. Signing a purchase contract doesn't immediately transfer title or complete payment; these happen days later. The trade and asset transfer occur at different times.

Similarly, existing securities settlement infrastructure creates a time gap between trade execution and asset transfer. If a counterparty defaults within this window, significant losses can occur. Central Counterparty Clearing Houses (CCPs) exist to prevent this. A CCP sits between buyer and seller; if one defaults, the other doesn't bear the loss directly. In the US, NSCC plays this role; in Korea, it's the clearing and settlement division of the Korea Exchange (KRX).

Historically, no CCP has experienced a total default, because the systemic consequences of a CCP failure are severe enough that member institutions and governments always intervene. But CCPs have been pushed to their limits under extreme market conditions. During the 1987 Black Monday crash, the Hong Kong Futures Exchange Clearing House faced bankruptcy due to massive margin call failures, only resolved by a government bailout and a four-day market closure. During the 2008 Lehman collapse and the 2018 Nasdaq clearing crisis, some loss absorption funds were indeed depleted.

Problem 2: Fragmented Ledgers & Reconciliation Costs. When an equity trade executes, the issuer, custodian, clearing house, and settlement institution each record it on their own ledgers. The same transaction is entered four times across four institutions. Because these ledgers aren't synchronized in real-time, they must be matched post-hoc using standardized message formats. This process is called reconciliation.

Ledgers don't always match. Each institution processes the same trade at different times, and differences in internal system formats can cause data loss or alteration during message conversion. When records diverge, staff must manually identify and correct discrepancies. While some steps are automated, errors remain frequent. This is why costs for personnel and systems dedicated to reconciliation and position discrepancy resolution persist. Corporate actions (events affecting company structure or shareholder rights, like dividends, stock splits, M&A) add further complexity; each institution must independently update its ledger and then re-reconcile, multiplying the workload.

Solution: Shared Ledger + Atomic Settlement. Putting securities settlement infrastructure on-chain changes two things: all participants see the same ledger, and trade execution and asset transfer happen simultaneously.

A shared ledger means every participant's data updates simultaneously when a trade is recorded, eliminating post-trade reconciliation. Placing cash and securities in the same environment removes the settlement delay that creates counterparty exposure. When both cash and securities are on-chain, trade execution and asset transfer can be bundled into a single transaction. Currently, cash flows through the banking system and securities through central securities depositories, separate from each other. On-chain, both exist in the same environment and execute simultaneously.

This is atomic settlement: all conditions must be met for the entire transaction to succeed; if any condition fails, the entire transaction is cancelled.

Case Study: DTCC.

On-chain securities settlement is already running in live trades. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has deployed its DiSH digital settlement platform on Canton for securities settlement. Lloyds Banking Group completed a trade using tokenized deposits to buy tokenized UK government bonds, with the entire process from issuance to settlement handled on-chain.

The most significant case is DTCC. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation is the core infrastructure for US securities settlement, handling clearing and settlement for most US-traded securities. DTCC partnered with Digital Asset, the company behind Canton Network, and obtained a no-action letter from the SEC in December 2025 – a pre-commitment from the regulator not to take action regarding a specific activity. The goal is to launch an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in the first half of 2026.

For DTCC, an institution that could lose its license with a single settlement failure, the decision to adopt on-chain infrastructure is no casual experiment. It reflects a deliberate judgment: the risks embedded in the current settlement architecture have surpassed the operational risks of migrating to new rails.

2.3 Capital Raising Market

The capital raising market is where governments and companies issue bonds and equity to raise funds. It consists of the primary market (new securities issuance) and the secondary market (trading and utilization of issued securities among investors). Bonds represent a promise to repay principal plus interest; equity grants holders ownership shares in the issuing company.

Problem 1: Issuance Process Delays. The longer the preparation period, the more variables beyond the issuer's control accumulate. Hedging costs rise, investor demand may shift, and in the worst case, the entire transaction fails. Every extra week on the timeline subjects the issuer to another week of market conditions they cannot control.

Problem 2: Fragmented Collateral System. Institutional investors buy assets for yield, but the real question is what happens afterwards. If purchased assets can be deployed in repo, used as collateral, or linked to other transactions, capital keeps working. The smoother these connections, the more transactions a single asset can support, making the asset more valuable from the issuer's perspective.

However, even when counterparties agree on collateral usage, execution is difficult. Collateral transactions require sequential eligibility verification, haircut calculation, and title transfer, each involving different institutions with disconnected systems. At every step, staff must send messages and wait for confirmations. This structure creates a vast gap between the scale of issued assets and the amount practically usable.

Solution: On-Chain Issuance.

The entire issuance process runs on smart contracts. Within regulatory parameters, agreed issuance terms are defined in code. After KYC and AML verification, subscription registration, allocation, and payment settlement are automated. Steps involving manual confirmation and message conversion are eliminated, significantly compressing the issuance cycle.

The structure of post-issuance utilization changes accordingly. Tokenized assets exist in an environment where all participating institutions share the same data in real-time on the same network. Collateral eligibility verification, haircut calculation, and title transfer are handled in a single process, without shuttling between independent systems. The ledgers once maintained separately by issuer, underwriter, custodian, and collateral manager merge into one. Once an asset is issued and subscribed, it can immediately serve as collateral or base asset for other transactions.

This model presupposes issuance privacy. Issuance terms, underwriter allocations, subscription prices, and investor lists are data that cannot be made public. If such information leaks, market prices fluctuate prematurely, and the issuer bears higher costs. Existing public permissionless blockchains only hide wallet addresses but expose all transaction data to everyone. For on-chain issuance to scale, it must run on permissioned infrastructure where transaction data is visible only to relevant parties.

Case Study: HSBC Orion. HSBC, a UK-based global bank with $3 trillion in assets, is a leader in bond underwriting and issuance. It launched its own digital asset platform, HSBC Orion, in 2023 as a digital bond issuance infrastructure. HSBC Orion runs on the Canton Network.

In February 2024, the Hong Kong government issued HKD 6 billion (approximately $770 million) in digital green bonds via HSBC Orion. This was the first multi-currency digital bond issued by a government, covering HKD, offshore RMB, EUR, and USD simultaneously. Over 50 global investors from eight nationalities participated, an exceptionally broad base for an early digital bond issuance. The settlement cycle was compressed from T+5 to T+1.

The significance of this issuance wasn't the issuance itself, but what followed. Within days of issuance, HSBC and Bank of East Asia (BEA) executed a repo transaction using these digital green bonds as collateral. The moment the bonds went live on the market, they were directly utilized as collateral on the same network. This was the first confirmed case of issuance and utilization connecting seamlessly without disruption.

The structure is as follows: When HSBC Orion issues digital green bonds, the bonds are recorded as tokens in the Bond Registry on Canton. When HSBC and BEA execute the repo transaction, another application on the same Canton network uses that token as collateral and settles the payment simultaneously.

The Hong Kong government didn't treat this issuance as a one-off event. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority subsequently launched a Digital Bond Subsidy Scheme, committing to subsidize half the issuance cost for digital bond issuers, turning a single experiment into a standard market infrastructure.

2.4 Stablecoins & Payments

Stablecoins are digital currencies pegged 1:1 to the US dollar. Unlike regular cryptocurrencies, their value is largely stable, allowing them to function as money circulating on a blockchain. USDC and USDT are the most typical examples.

Problem 1: Fully Public Transaction Data. On public blockchains, all transactions are visible to anyone. Who sent how much to whom and when, and their balances, can be instantly retrieved by searching a wallet address on a block explorer. Analyzing a company's stablecoin payment history can reveal unit prices negotiated with counterparties, seasonal revenue patterns, timing of new market entry, M&A fund flows, and executive compensation. While payment efficiency is clear, the complete transparency of transaction data is a structural limitation.

Problem 2: Disconnection from Internal Systems. When a company receives stablecoin payments, the funds arrive in a blockchain wallet completely separate from its accounting system, ERP, and treasury management platform. Before the funds can be used,