You always hear people talk about the importance of narratives.

What’s the next big story to drive speculative enthusiasm? What sectors or ideas will capture the imagination of the masses?

Potential abounds and everybody has their lists. So do I!

It’s only three themes deep: Real-World Assets, Ethereum Killers, and Regulated Crypto.

Read below for my reasons and some cryptos that will benefit if these narratives play out.

Real-World Assets (RWAs)

RWAs represent digital records of things you own in the “real world.”

For example, commodities, artwork, real estate, stocks, bonds, and anything else you can place a value on. A trusted custodian secures these assets (or claims on these assets) in exchange for tokens that you can sell or redeem on-demand.

These tokens capture and distribute yields, dividends, and other benefits to token holders. As a result, businesses and common people can sell to more buyers in more ways with more transparency and lower fees than they can with legacy financial technology. Buyers can access these assets from anybody, anywhere, at any time using a crypto wallet.

Think about the original RWA, USD stablecoins. They play a huge role in crypto. Getting US dollars is hard. Getting USD tokens is easy.

When the next bull run starts, you’ll see a similar theme with a wider variety of assets. Already, the TVL of tokenized treasuries alone has grown from $100 million at the beginning of 2023 to over $600 million as of this post.

This growth is independent of anything going on in the crypto market and doesn’t include stablecoins, commodities, or properties secured by blockchain.

Some traditional institutions, businesses, and firms already recognize that blockchain technology is robust and sophisticated enough that they can apply it to the financial assets and products that they already sell. This opens up a new source of revenue, engagement, and cost savings.

Even the IMF recognizes the transformative potential of this technology.

Common people may not get it yet, but they’ll like the idea of getting money for assets that they already own—or getting a chance to make money off of assets that other people own—from their laptop, without a broker taking a cut of the deal.

Once legal and regulatory matters get settled, entrepreneurs and speculators will use RWAs to tokenize private credit and equity agreements. Home builders will tokenize parcels and buildings. Lawyers and clearinghouses will convert deeds and liens into tokens that owners can fractionalize or borrow against with DeFi protocols.

Bernstein estimates that, including currencies, that tokenized assets could reach $8 trillion within just five years (including the tokenization of 2% of global money supply). Bank of America says RWAs will make a $16 trillion market by 2030.

Those numbers represent the value of actual assets, not investments in the crypto market. They’re also wildly ambitious, but they’ll seem realistic once this narrative gathers steam and the crypto market starts to zoom.

Already in 2023, we’re seeing growth in awareness and functionality. Binance has a graphic that sums it up but barely scratches the surface of what’s going on in this space.

You can imagine this trend will accelerate.

A teenager in Nigeria can buy a stake in a US real estate investment trust. A street vendor in Lebanon can own a share of Apple. A Colombian farmer can put a portion of his idle capital into a 6-month T-bill.

Markets that were previously inaccessible, suddenly become accessible. That’s an appealing thought.

Wall Street gets a new way to earn fees (buying, selling, and creating tokenized assets). Token issuers get access to a global capital pool. Custodians make money servicing issuers and redeemers. Investors get access to new assets and markets.

Everybody wins.

What projects can benefit?

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