Not all RWA growth is real, and the industry knows it

Inflated dashboards don’t build institutional trust. Only verifiable assets, regulatory clarity and real usage can power the RWA revolution.

Opinion by: Aishwary Gupta, global head of payments and RWAs at Polygon Labs

Most of the eye-popping RWA numbers making headlines are smoke and mirrors. Unless the industry course-corrects, it risks eroding the institutional trust it has spent years trying to build. Every week brings another announcement claiming billions in tokenized assets. When institutional investors request basic details, however, the answers become mysteriously vague. 

OpenAI was forced to distance itself from Robinhood’s claim that it was offering access to tokenized stock, clarifying that this did not represent real equity in the company. In May 2025, the SEC charged Unicoin for misleading investors by overstating the value of tokenized real estate deals.

Read more