On “Tokenization”: Thoughts from the Bund Conference

Gold, which has been dormant for thousands of years, is mankind's eternal belief——When war, unrest or inflation occurs, gold is the last refuge of value.

In one civilization iteration after another, it has always maintained its unique value status.

But this time, things seem to have changed. The World Gold Council has formally put forward a proposal to launch a digital token backed by physical gold in London, aiming to revolutionize the way gold is traded, settled and mortgaged. This move will inject new vitality into the world's largest physical gold trading center with a scale of up to US$93 billion. We can regard it as RWA (Real-world Assets) - the largest experiment in the tokenization of physical assets to date. This has, of course, triggered a fierce discussion in the market about the collision between tradition and innovation – when physical assets move towards tokenization, how do we open this door? I had the honor of attending a discussion on token economy at the Bund Conference in Shanghai, where I witnessed different perspectives and value orientations from multiple dimensions, including third parties, industry participants, regulators, economists, and financial institutions. To sum up everyone's views in one sentence, the token economy is very worthy of discussion. But to put it another way, for tokenization to reach its peak, it will require the coordinated efforts of regulators, financial institutions, and technology companies to jointly explore and support the real economy.

Before Dawn: Exploration and Boundaries of Token Economy

2025may be a small but important turning point for the entire token economy. This year, the US government proposed

The meaning of dawn: the value and red line of the token economy

In essence,The underlying logic of the development of RWA

Every improvement in transaction and payment efficiency has a positive effect on improving the efficiency of economic activities in human society as a whole.

The development and exploration of blockchain technology has made asset tokenization and token payment possible, bringing new application prospects for improving transaction efficiency.

Based onrwa.xyzData,2022GlobalRWA5 billion US dollars. But as of July 2025, the global RWA market has grown to leaf="">US$25.5 billion, achieving a rapid growth of 3 times annually. Looking at the underlying asset structure, private credit, U.S. Treasuries, and commodities together account for nearly 95%. In the words of Chairman Li Yang at the Bund Conference, "the early stages of development are primarily based on safe assets." At this immature stage, the industry as a whole needs to continuously accumulate credit assets to consolidate the value of upstream and downstream industries.

Source: Cathay Pacific Haitong Securities

Ant Group

Li Lihui said at the meeting,