Hi everyone, I’m Shengxiong (Leo). I study self-discipline, behavior change, and long-term investing — but what I care about most is one thing: whether you actually take action.
I recently read an article claiming the next 100x opportunity is RWA — the tokenization of real-world assets.
My first reaction was conflicted. On one hand, my heart skipped a beat — the phrase “100x opportunity” is something I’ve heard far too often over the years; nine and a half out of ten times, someone’s trying to sell me something. On the other hand, a familiar anxiety crept up. Because this term is both familiar and strange to me. Familiar, because I’ve been hearing words like blockchain and Bitcoin for nearly fifteen years; strange, because if you asked me to clearly explain how it actually works and what it has to do with me, I’d still be completely lost.
Then I told myself: this time, I must not shy away just because it’s hard to understand or too complicated.
Why “this time”? Because last time, I really did miss out precisely because I “didn’t understand.”
The Time I Missed Bitcoin
In 2014, I first came across an introduction to Bitcoin in Li Xiaolai’s book Treat Time as a Friend. Back then a single coin cost several thousand yuan. I deliberated for a long time. I happened to have a sum saved up for my MBA tuition at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. I thought: either use the tuition to buy Bitcoin, or use it to study. Then I saw the news — the state issued many warnings about Bitcoin’s risks. I’m a cautious person, so I put the money toward my degree instead and didn’t buy.
Recently I listened to Justin Sun’s course. He faced the exact same choice I did. In 2013 he was studying in the US, and his parents sent him 300,000 yuan for tuition. Without a second thought, he put it all into Bitcoin — and within a year made over 10 million yuan, changing his destiny. Everyone knows what happened after.
Facing the same situation, the consequences of different choices — these past few years, that’s something I’ve felt deeply.
That taste of “I could have, but I didn’t” — those who’ve experienced it know.
But cooling down and looking back, this caution of “steer clear when I don’t understand” isn’t all bad. It was the very same caution that let me dodge the temptation to catch a falling knife in the stock market later, and that kept me prudent at the height of P2P, pulling my money out early. I should count myself among the few who exited P2P with their shirts on.
So you see, “skirting away because I don’t get it” is a double-edged sword. It helps you avoid traps, but it also makes you miss the train. The problem was never “should I understand it” — it’s that we always reduce it to two extremes: either go all in, or ignore it completely.
What Exactly Is RWA, in Plain Language
RWA stands for Real World Asset — the tokenization of real-world assets. To break it down: take valuable things in the real world — US Treasury bonds, gold, real estate, even corporate stocks and bonds, artworks — and turn their ownership or income rights into a string of digital tokens on a blockchain.
Once tokenized, a few things that were hard to do before become easier.
For example, one possible model: a several-million-yuan house doesn’t have to be bought whole; it can be split into ten thousand shares, and by buying a small slice you become a “micro-shareholder” collecting rent. For another, the yield of a US Treasury bond (an asset right) can be transferred on-chain 24/7, without waiting for an exchange to open. And then there’s this: assets once reachable only by institutions now have a lowered barrier, so ordinary people can get a sliver of exposure.
Sounds wonderful, right? But hold on — the beautiful side and the far-away side are two edges of the same thing.
What the Numbers Tell Me
I checked the situation as of mid-2026. Tokenized real-world assets on-chain (excluding stablecoins) are roughly between $32 billion and $35 billion. A little over a year earlier, that number was $5.8 billion — about a five- to sixfold increase in sixteen months.
Leading the way are tokenized US Treasuries and money-market funds. BlackRock’s BUIDL fund alone accounts for several billion dollars. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said something often quoted: “Tokenization is the next generation of markets.”
So where does “100x” come from? It doesn’t mean 100x tomorrow. What’s called a “100x opportunity” is, more accurately, some institutions’ long-term projections for the future scale of the tokenization market — not a claim that buying some RWA product today yields 100x returns. Projections vary hugely across institutions. For instance, BCG once projected a ~$16 trillion market opportunity by 2030, while McKinsey’s 2024 base case was about $2 trillion, with an optimistic case around $4 trillion. This is the real source of the phrase “100x headroom” — it’s an ultra-long-term structural thesis, not a get-rich-quick signal for next week.
So when an article uses “100x opportunity” as its headline, my habit is to first ask: who’s making money off saying this? I’ve written before that “everyone willing to share information has their own motives. If you and everyone else know the same information, it’s hard to reap excess profits from it.” That line holds up just as well today.
Why It’s Both Near and Far
It’s near because this is no longer a toy geeks tinker with in underground labs.
Giants of traditional finance — BlackRock, JPMorgan, Franklin, Fidelity — are already doing it for real. Regulation is landing too: the US signed its first federal stablecoin framework in July 2025, and the EU, Hong Kong, and Singapore each have frameworks catching up. Of course, there’s one reality mainland Chinese readers must face: overseas markets are pushing RWA aggressively, but mainland China still takes a strict risk-prevention and restrictive stance toward domestic RWA tokenization activities — it’s not a market where you can just “participate if you want.” Some applications have begun moving from experimentation toward financial infrastructure, but there’s still a clear gap before it becomes mainstream infrastructure.
It’s far because for ordinary people like us, the barrier hasn’t come down one bit.
Many products are blatantly open only to accredited investors. For example, the US “accredited investor” standard isn’t simply a $5 million net-worth requirement; and products like BlackRock’s BUIDL have at times set a $5 million initial minimum investment. On-chain liquidity is highly concentrated in a few products, and a large share of tokenized assets barely trade at all; words like private keys, wallets, and cross-chain are still Greek to most people. More practically, behind the “100x opportunity” narrative, there are usually people selling courses, coins, or communities.
This explains that opening line: blockchain feels so far from us, yet so near. Near, because it’s really happening, and both giants and regulators have entered. Far, because for it to truly reach ordinary people who can participate safely, several hurdles still stand in the way.
My Posture
I won’t rush in and go all in — that doesn’t fit my self-awareness of being “just an ordinary person when it comes to investing.”
But I also don’t intend to do what I did in 2014 — use “too complicated” as an excuse to shut it out entirely.
My approach: be an observer first, and inch closer in small steps. Put it into my life-operations system as a long-term watch item, not a bet to flip my life overnight. When I see clearly, I’ll take the step; when I don’t, at least I’ll write it down first.
When the internet came, we in traditional industries were oblivious, and when we woke up, everything was already “internet-plus.” When AI came, we panicked for a while too. Will blockchain and RWA be the next one? I don’t know — no one can make that call for me.
But I’m increasingly convinced that toward new things, “I don’t get it” shouldn’t automatically equal “I’ll ignore it.” We can first be honest observers — which is more honest than blindly rushing in, and more honest than forever keeping the door shut.
Have you ever had that feeling: something is clearly happening right next to you, yet you always feel it’s far away? Blockchain is like that for me. Perhaps admitting it’s “both near and far” is the most fitting posture for ordinary people facing a new world.
Hey, you’ve read all the way to here — original writing isn’t easy, so a like to show some support would mean a lot~
