The RWA War: Stablecoins, Speed, and Control

Consensus Hong Kong 2026 played out as an RWA conference that happened to be about crypto. Conversations moved beyond pitch decks to sharp disagreements over architecture, regulation, and what tokenization is actually meant to solve. Panelists converged on one point: stablecoins are the most successful real-world asset token.

'The most successful RWA is USDT,' said CJ Fong. Paxos pointed to rising demand for PAXG as evidence that stablecoins are expanding beyond dollar pegs into commodities and treasuries, pursuing multi-jurisdictional approvals on the assumption that stablecoins and tokenized assets are converging.

From the infrastructure side, Stable’s USDT Zero aims to eliminate gas fees and deliver a user experience comparable to Swift. Two opposing architectures dominated the debate. Securitize advocated native token issuance within a permissioned framework, arguing that wrapper models can distance investors from underlying assets and weaken protection.

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

rwa, stablecoins, usdt, paxos, paxg, tokenization, usdt zero, gas fees, permissioned framework, securitize