OpenEden’s Stephanie Chew: Why Winning The RWA Tokenization Race Now Comes Down To Collateral
In Brief
Stephanie Chew of OpenEden on why compliance is now table stakes, collateral is king, and what institutions are really demanding from tokenized assets.
The word “tokenization” may soon become redundant. Because the concept has simply succeeded — quietly, and faster than most anticipated. The total value of tokenized RWAs on public blockchains reached $31 billion as of July 2026, up more than 400% since the start of 2025, spread across 167 platforms and held by nearly a million individual holders. Tokenized Treasuries remain the largest asset class, crossing the $10 billion mark for the first time in February 2026. With BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and BNY Mellon now running production-level tokenized products, RWAs are no longer a niche thesis — they have become a key reason institutions come on-chain in the first place.
But explosive growth has a way of separating the actual infrastructure from narrative. As the market matures, the questions institutions ask have changed entirely. It is no longer “is tokenization real?” It is “who is the issuer, what is the legal chain from token to enforceable claim, and what happens in insolvency?”
Those are precisely the questions OpenEden was built to answer — and the shift matters, because not everyone can.
In this interview, MPost spoke with Stephanie Chew, Head of Strategy at OpenEden, about what a trustworthy tokenization structure requires and where the industry still falls short. She makes a pointed argument: compliance is no longer a differentiator, it is the entry ticket — and what comes after it is what actually wins. The expert walks through why collateral has become the use case institutions care about most, what the recent wave of synthetic stablecoin failures actually revealed about where yield-bearing structures go wrong, and why APAC demand is pointing toward territory the market has not yet mapped.
The obstacle to tokenization is not the blockchain itself, but whether institutions can trust the structure behind it. What does a trustworthy structure consist of? Where does the industry still fall short?
At OpenEden, we believe a trustworthy structure needs four things, which is really what we’re built around: regulated issuance, bankruptcy-remote asset segregation, institutional-grade custody, and transparent verification.
OpenEden Digital operates as a bankruptcy-remote segregated accounts company under the Bermuda Class F digital asset business license. We work closely with large traditional asset managers such as Bank of New York, which functions as both investment manager and custodian of the underlying assets for TBILL, one of our flagship products. TBILL carries an S&P rating of AA+, which independently validates the structure rather than relying on self-certification.
On where the industry falls short: a lot of products stop at “the token is backed by certain assets” without showing the legal chain from token to enforceable claim, which is what investors are really concerned about. The RWA market is currently split between a distributed value of around $30 billion and a much larger represented value that includes off-chain assets not yet issued as freely transferable tokens.
OpenEden has positioned itself as compliance-first. Based on what you hear directly from institutional customers, is that still a differentiator — or has it become table stakes, with the true advantage lying elsewhere?
A few years ago, compliance was a differentiator. Today, for serious institutions, it is the entry ticket.
As regulatory jurisdictions evolve, compliance is becoming a competitive advantage — without it, companies can lose the right to operate. Institutions no longer ask whether we are crypto-native enough. They ask specifically: who is the issuer, what is the regulatory framework, are the assets recognized as securities or digital assets, can they be distributed, to what investor base — and, most importantly, what happens in insolvency? Can my risk and legal teams approve this?
Compliance gets us into the room and helps us clear due diligence. The true differentiator is what we do after that: distribution, liquidity, integrations, collateral utility, and product design. The point is not just being regulated, but using that regulatory foundation to make products like TBILL and USDO usable across institutional trading, collateral, liquidity, and settlement workflows. Our vision is to enable more efficient capital markets — leveraging DeFi to abstract away TradFi settlement delays and create composability from the moment tokens are minted.
What is the most common hesitation you encounter from institutions before they commit?
The most common hesitation used to be: is tokenization real, or is this just a crypto narrative? That has shifted. Institutions now accept that tokenization is real; their hesitation has become more practical.
They ask: can I actually use this asset within my existing risk, custody, compliance, and trading setup? They ask about liquidity, redemption, counterparty exposure, custody reporting, composability, and capital efficiency. This is why OpenEden is focused heavily on integrations. It is not enough to just issue a tokenized asset — it has to sit inside the workflows that institutions already use and trust.
What distinguishes USDO from major established dollar-denominated stablecoins? Why does its structural backing carry more importance today than before?
Every dollar of USDO traces back to one thing: a custodied T-bill — not a derivative, fund-managed trade, or leverage. If you can’t point to the asset generating the yield, you shouldn’t trust the yield.
USDO is designed to be a fully transparent, regulated stablecoin, fully backed by tokenized short-term U.S. Treasuries. This matters more today because institutions have become much more sensitive to where yield actually comes from. After several synthetic stablecoin failures, yield without transparent backing is a red flag.
How do you determine which assets to tokenize — driven by the asset’s characteristics, or by existing demand and available distribution channels?
We started with TBILL because it is the cleanest asset to prove the structure, and there was obvious immediate demand for on-chain dollar yield.
Every parameter matters, but there is also a dependence on the maturity of market participants in Web3 and whether they understand the risk and mechanisms of how underlying RWA assets operate in TradFi. Eventually, I believe we will see native assets tokenized directly rather than through SPV or wrapper structures where investor rights and legal obligations are still opaque. Institutional demand is important and determines what we tokenize, but ensuring we have a regulated structure that is actually investable — and distribution channels that reach our target audience — is most important.
OpenEden began with tokenized government debt and has since expanded to more complex assets like corporate bonds. What conditions must be met before extending that framework to higher-risk asset classes?
Treasuries were the natural starting point — low risk, highly liquid, trading in the hundreds of billions daily, and easy for institutions to understand. Moving up the risk curve requires stronger conditions: reliable pricing, credit analysis, liquidity management, clear redemption mechanics, and qualified custody. The key is not whether an asset can technically be tokenized — it is whether investors can understand the risk, verify the backing, and exit under clear terms. We are only comfortable moving up the risk curve when the structure remains institutional grade. The goal is not to tokenize risk for its own sake, but to bring better-designed yield products on chain.
How does institutional demand in APAC differ from Western markets?
In APAC, demand is more distribution- and utility-led. Institutions and platforms are interested in tokenized assets for payments, exchange access, collateral, settlement, and cross-border use cases. Hong Kong, Singapore, and other regional hubs are taking an active approach to building regulated digital asset frameworks, which naturally creates appetite for compliant market infrastructure.
In Western markets — particularly among larger asset managers and financial institutions — the conversation is more balance sheet- and portfolio-led: tokenized money market funds, treasury management, collateral efficiency, and operational settlement. APAC tends to move faster when there is a clear regulated channel and commercial use case, while Western institutions focus more on due diligence and are slower to deploy. Both markets care about compliance, but APAC links tokenization more directly to market access, payments, and distribution, while Western markets start from asset allocation and infrastructure efficiency.
OpenEden recently entered Hong Kong. Does regulatory access alter which assets you are prepared to tokenize, or does it primarily affect who can access them?
OpenEden is a global platform, and each product has its own target audience. In Hong Kong, we work with licensed venues and institutional infrastructure aligned with our direction — specifically Ex.IO, a VATP partner that supports compliant access to TBILL and HighBond for qualified investors. Their KYC requirements align with ours, which simplifies distribution. For other products in other jurisdictions, it gets more nuanced.
Is there an asset class that APAC institutions are expressing their interest in?
APAC institutions generally have a higher yield hurdle than their Western counterparts — they want high single-digit returns rather than 100–200 basis points above risk-free rates, and they tend to prefer leverage strategies. This is why RWA equities are performing well in Asia, with strong open interest on platforms like Binance and Bitget reflecting significant institutional demand. The RWA perp market is also growing, with traders cross-arbitraging across venues using these assets.
We have not yet offered a product specifically catering to this demand, but we are actively looking at structured product formats that can deliver higher yields for APAC clients — still within our regulated Bermuda framework to ensure security and custody are fully matched.
Among USDO’s current use cases — off-exchange collateral for Binance, derivatives margin for Galaxy, and integration with FalconX — which is generating the strongest institutional traction?
Collateral is showing the clearest institutional pull. It mirrors what happens in TradFi, where clients park cash in deposits that then become assets to use as collateral for other investments. Arrangements like the off-exchange collateral with Binance, derivative margin with Galaxy, and options trading platforms allow institutions to put their idle dollar balances to work double duty — sitting as margin collateral while still earning yield. That is a meaningfully different ask than pure settlement or payments, because it requires custody, redemption, and legal claim guarantees to be established much earlier in the process. Institutions will not post something as margin unless they trust the structure completely.
Are you seeing a direct shift in the questions institutions ask — moving from “can this be tokenized?” toward “does being on-chain make our capital work harder?”
Definitely, and it changes the direction we are building toward. OpenEden is not just an issuer of tokenized assets — we are becoming infrastructure for productive on-chain capital, providing access to different risk, yield, and liquidity profiles.
That is why we increasingly measure success not just by AUM or TVL — those metrics can be purely incentivized, and in Web3, incentivized TVL migrates whenever another player throws incentives around. We focus more on utility: collateral adoption, liquidity integrations, transaction flows, and distribution channels.
Do you expect recent synthetic and algorithmic stablecoin collapses to accelerate institutional capital movement toward regulated, asset-backed structures — or to make institutions more cautious about the yield-bearing stablecoin category as a whole?
I believe it will accelerate the shift toward regulated, asset-backed products. These failures happened because reserves were not transparent, and institutions allocating into yield will demand better structure around it. The lesson is not that yield-bearing stablecoins cannot work — it is that backing, leverage, liquidity, and redemption mechanics matter more than they appeared to. Even well-known players like Ethena are changing strategy and pivoting toward RWA tokens with real underlying assets as reserves. This is why tokenized treasuries and regulated money market-style products are gaining renewed attention: they are boring in the right way — familiar assets with clear cash flows, institutional custody, and transparent reserves.
Looking two to three years ahead, what does institutional engagement with tokenized assets look like once it has moved past the current adoption phase?
I think “tokenization” will stop being a keyword. We will see more native assets on chain, and the distinction between a tokenized wrapper and a native on-chain token will disappear. The focus will shift to efficiency across capital market instruments — tokenized products will be evaluated on their own merits, not on the novelty of being on chain.
Disclaimer
In line with the Trust Project guidelines, please note that the information provided on this page is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other form of advice. It is important to only invest what you can afford to lose and to seek independent financial advice if you have any doubts. For further information, we suggest referring to the terms and conditions as well as the help and support pages provided by the issuer or advertiser. MetaversePost is committed to accurate, unbiased reporting, but market conditions are subject to change without notice.
About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
