In the previous article, I have written many times that the rise of AI agents has given me different thoughts on many previous applications and scenarios.
Because the rise of AI agents may completely change the operating logic and operating mode of many applications and scenarios.
Recently, I saw a video explaining AI on the internet, which made me rethink RWA.
This is a video of an interview with two entrepreneurs by Bloomberg on January 22.
One is Larry Fink, CEO of the capital giant BlackRock, and the other is Peng Xiao, CEO of the AI company G42.
In this video, Peng Xiao mentioned the following points:
- In the future, each of us will have multiple AI agents.
- Cryptocurrencies are the currency of AI.
- With the advent of artificial intelligence, videos, texts, and sounds will all be forgeable. At that time, the only thing that can verify the authenticity of this is blockchain technology, a kind of encrypted watermark based on blockchain technology, signed by a real person with their own wallet to ensure the authenticity of the content.
- Because there will be AI agents to conduct transactions on behalf of humans, there will be a large number of 24/7 uninterrupted trading markets in the future globally.
Of these four points, the first two we have repeatedly shared in our articles, and our readers should not find them new. The third point is very forward-looking and interesting, and I will share it for everyone to think about, but I will not expand on it in this article.
The fourth point is what I want to focus on sharing today.
My understanding of RWA is:
Its goal is to tokenize off-chain assets and put them on the chain so that we can trade them on the chain.
For this track, I have never really understood what fundamental need it solves.
Let's take the tokenized US stocks as an example.
The actual trading is of US stocks. And the major traders of US stocks are generally traditional financial institutions. Which of these institutions doesn't have a legal US dollar investment channel? Since they have such a channel, why do they have to go around, specifically exchange fiat currency for stablecoins and then go to the chain to buy tokenized US stocks?
If this market is not for major traders, is it for retail investors with crypto assets? But looking around, how many retail investors in the crypto ecosystem care about the rise of US stocks? Isn't buying meme coins much more exciting? Even if they don't buy meme coins, buying Bitcoin isn't bad either?
It's not the urgent need of major traders, nor is it the darling of retail investors, so where is its user base?
Even if we think outside the box and imagine that this market has great potential, my view has always been:
Because this track involves a lot of regulatory issues and negotiations with government departments, it will be the fat meat of traditional financial institutions, and it has little to do with us retail investors. At most, we retail investors can only watch the excitement, and the direct benefits we can get from it are very limited.
In the video mentioned above, Peng Xiao's mention of 24/7 uninterrupted trading has opened up a ceiling for the RWA track.
Because AI agents, unlike humans, do not need rest, they can be active around the clock. I believe AI agents in the financial field will have great potential. This also means that there will be a large number of AI agents ready to trade at any time in the future.
And in the current global financial market, there are only a few 24/7 trading markets, and many markets are still divided by time zones and holidays. This is far from satisfying the greed and bloodthirstiness of finance.
And once there is an RWA market, all financial transactions are placed on the blockchain, able to support 24/7 uninterrupted trading, this will provide great flexibility and profit opportunities for participants who aim to profit from trading. Because unlike humans, AI agents fundamentally do not need rest, they can conduct various transactions on the chain in real-time.
The first to be attracted by this trading scenario will be the countless institutional investors, especially the financial institutions engaged in quantitative trading.
Once this scenario is realized, the global financial landscape will be completely overturned, whether in terms of trading volume, trading varieties or trading scale, it will present an explosive growth.
Such a scenario will not only overturn the existing crypto ecosystem, but also overturn the traditional financial ecosystem.
Since it is an overturning, it will inevitably encounter resistance.
I think the resistance from the crypto ecosystem is not great, but the resistance from the traditional financial ecosystem may be considerable, especially the resistance from regulators.
However, now with a leader like Trump who is friendly to the crypto ecosystem, I expect this situation will change a lot.
Therefore, in the next few years, I believe the RWA market will accelerate its development, and traditional financial giants will strive to build a 24/7 trading ecosystem on the chain, with trading assets not only including crypto assets, but also stocks, foreign exchange, derivatives and any other profitable off-chain assets.
In this video, the CEO of BlackRock also appeared. This scenario makes me feel that the traditional institutions' attention and pursuit of the crypto ecosystem is already very different from what it was 4 years ago.
4 years ago, we might have been able to say that we retail investors were ahead of traditional financial institutions, and we got on the crypto asset bandwagon earlier than them.
But now I feel that institutions like BlackRock are far ahead of a considerable number of us retail investors in many ways, they have greater ambitions and more alternative layout ideas.
