𝙒𝙃𝙄𝙎𝙋𝙀𝙍𝙀𝙍

I love what I do. I get to spend my days on things others call a hobby. But sometimes this industry gets on my nerves. Not the work, but how we sell it. We talk a ton about getting more issuances on-chain. Hardly anyone stops to ask if it even makes sense for that issuer and that asset. The other thing is how some providers along the asset lifecycle show up. Not all of them, of course. But the loudest are often the ones distracting most from the fact that they don’t know how issuers from the traditional world work. The volume of your so-called “partner chain” doesn’t matter to an issuer. Everyone wants the biggest RWA number, but nobody counts the same way. Some count target volumes that never get subscribed, some add completely unregulated assets that somehow fit the narrative. The biggest number wins, because it’s the easiest one to market. Louder, bigger, sexier. And even an honest number says little. Most of it comes from tokenized money market funds, treasuries and gold. That says a lot about the distribution power of BlackRock or Franklin Templeton. It says very little about what a family business can expect from its own issuance. Same goes for DeFi. Lending and borrowing work when there’s a liquid market behind an asset. That’s why tokenized treasuries and money market funds are already used as collateral. For a typical private market bond, that market doesn’t exist yet, and licensed secondary venues for tokenized securities are still rare. Without a successful placement and a working market, all those protocol partnerships don’t help a traditional issuer. Think of a third-generation family real estate company. They manage, build and revitalize properties, and a bond is one way they want to finance their next project. Their investors are traditional. They pay in fiat, don’t have a wallet and don’t want to sign things multiple times, certainly not through tools like Privy. They just want to put their money to work, without any hurdles. Of course, a custody provider still has to be part of the setup, but the investors never feel it. Sounds strange, but that’s how it is. What the issuer expects is what it knows from traditional financing: people to talk to, partners who understand its business, predictable costs, digitalization and automation where it actually makes sense, and someone who stays for the security’s entire lifetime. No fancy DeFi pitch. No stories about what might be possible in a couple of years or in some regulatory gray zone. The chain, custody, the registrar, the liability umbrella, the payment provider, the on-chain cash leg: all of that should work together quietly in the background. What counts is whether the partner understands the business and helps it reach its goal, instead of building a silo solution that leaves it on its own. So before we talk about getting more issuances on-chain, let’s ask if it even makes sense for that issuer and that asset. That’s where the conversation should start.