How large tokenization of real-world assets could become

Transcript

My personal opinion is that 5 years from now the majority of any kind of asset cash flow generating is going to transition onto the blockchain. >> What's up everybody? It's LGND here and welcome to the Milkroad Show, the daily crypto show that really needs tokenization to accelerate so I can start leverage betting my vehicles and furniture too. I don't know who wrote that. Today's June 26th, 2026 recording on June 25th. Everybody in crypto says real world assets are the next trillion dollar opportunity and they're definitely right. But tokenizing an asset is the easy part. The hard part is custody settlement compliance liquidity, servicing, and convincing actual institutions to use the thing. So today we're breaking down what's real, what's still kind of like maybe fluff

narrative that you're hearing out there, and what it actually takes to bring serious assets on chain with Ivo Georgiev, co-founder of Real Finance. Today's episode is brought to you by Bitget, stocks 2.0 with real liquidity, real dividends, and Nexo, earn interest, borrow, and trade crypto. Ivo, what's going on man? Wel- welcome to Milkroad. >> Well, hey. Thanks thanks for having me and thanks for for the invite and it's pleasure to be here. Great intro by the way and yeah, indeed, you know, tokenization is a topic which is a very hot topic to be honest and just a quick correction, it's not a trillion dollar industry, it's 33T.

Trillion [laughter] dollar industry. So, you know, huge topic to be honest and um I'm excited to you know, deep dive into it and um Yeah, let's discuss it. >> Absolutely. What you know, I I feel like we hear a lot about tokenization and especially given these days that the market is um you know, Bitcoin price is struggling, right? It's kind of hot it's hard for people to understand, you know, what is what is actually being built in the tokenization space. So I feel like you guys are a good are a good example of that. So maybe you can tell us like like you know, what where what is the kind of current status of RWAs? Like what what where are we at right now with actually bringing a lot of this stuff on

chain? >> Actually, currently I think we're in the stage where, you know, we have passed the theoretical possibilities of the blockchain and we have moved on to the practical terms. You know, we we had the NFT seasons, the DeFi season, etc. etc. Now I think it's, you know, actual tangible assets season, you know, it's something which uh you know, people have been to be honest, waiting for, especially institutions, like serious businesses have been waiting uh for this, you know, okay, on theory it's nice, uh how do we use it? Now >> Yeah.

>> uh you know, stablecoins have kind of like shown the path, but stablecoins are, you know, just a small fraction of what can actually be achieved with the technology and, you know, that's how we started with uh Real Finance. Uh just give, you know, some background to myself and to my other co-founder, Valentin. Like we both come from uh basically traditional financial sector. We were Actually, we met like uh 8 years ago uh at Fund of Funds. We were in charge of a portfolio of 1.5 billion of different financial instruments, which we were designing. So, that's where we met. Uh you know, we did guarantee schemes, you know, letters of credit on

a wholesale level, uh settlement with banks etc. And we we found out about blockchain, right? And uh Bitcoin and, you know, this whole concept of uh some strange technology which does amazing settlement, you know, no T+3, +2, and uh we were okay, you know, this could be useful for financial instruments. How can we do it? And uh we started exploring and about like 2 years we started you know like basically digging into it very hardcore.

And what we found out to be honest is that the technology is cool, practical use that's where we need to focus and you know business cases. Basically when you go to a bank you when you go to a financial institution, what is the business case you're offering? Why are you offering it? And this is kind of like you know the key here and um I think that uh we have managed to solve it to a quite a quite quite big extent so far. Uh we're still pre-mainnet. So uh you know in September we're launching mainnet and uh there's going to be a lot of news coming up to September, but uh yeah I I'll I'll let you uh you know I I

can speak for hours here. So I'll let you have a couple of questions cuz I think you do have some and >> Well yeah what kind of what kind of RWAs is Real Finance focusing on? Cuz I think we we've had we've had a few people that we we obviously talked about this pretty often. Um we do look at uh a lot of different assets that are coming on chain, but I want to know like what what of everything that's available, right? You're saying there's 33 trillion dollars worth of assets that can come on chain here, which area are you guys focusing on at Real Finance? >> Basically we're focusing on what we know. We're focusing on what the team is good at and um yeah 33 trillion is uh is a huge number, but those are to be honest only financial instruments. Like those are

financial uh assets which we're talking about and we are aiming to to get uh basically a market share from that. Uh overall we're focusing on equities, debt instruments, uh treasuries, private credit as well. But what we're very good at is different let's say financial financial instruments and putting them in different baskets. And um that's I think what to a certain extent was missing from the market. So, you you know, you have like some assets which are li- liquid, you have others which are liquid. Of course,

you know, the liquid ones are going towards stable coins. But there isn't like this fine mixture where you know, actually institutions can settle between each other or where you know, they can exchange those assets between each other. And uh I mean, a lot of people are figuring it out. How we figured it out and I think you know, we're one of the first is that we do not only utilize the technology uh in on our consensus layer, we actually have a dual validator system.

So, you know, business entities, they're not excluded from the whole validation aspect of the blockchain itself. So, that's why we're on a one, right? So, we have our own consensus layer, we have our own rewards, we have our own proof of stake. And we include business entities, so asset issuers, uh credit scores, insurance, everything is included within the blockchain itself. So, on a on a very basic consensus layer, the businesses are involved not only on the traditional RWAs, but they're involved within the network as well. And you know,

once we explain all of the mechanics to them, it kind of just clicks, you know, like people start uh okay, yeah, this makes sense. You know, we can settle instantly, that's good. Uh we can do it 24/7, that's even better. And uh you know, we can basically tokenize portions of our portfolios, we can tokenize our treasuries and uh actually leverage upon them or exchange upon them. This is where institutions get interested. You know, I don't know how familiar you are with um clearing houses.

Clearing houses is basically a third party which guarantees the settlement between the other two parties on a financial like for financial institutions. It's kind of like uh the middleman. And they're you know, few people know about them, but you know, they're making quite a decent amount of money out of uh you know, a very simple task uh which can be replaced with uh two smart contracts and uh you know, on the bright chain. Let's put it that way. And this is kind of like um the origination not only of the idea, but the next step for us to be honest to to have like these institutions actually adopt and settle and trade

between each other, not only to make it available for retail, of course, but also to have [clears throat] it as a tool for them. >> Guys, listen, we are at a very crucial point in time right now. AI stocks have ripped, they're going to keep ripping. Our analysts on the AI side are up like literally 100% or more on quite a few calls and crypto is about to boom again, or at least it feels that way. If you want on the inside on what we're buying, what our analysts are doing, what's on their watch list, all of that is in Milk Road Pro, so join at the link below. >> Mhm.

>> So your So your strategy or you basically your your thesis for launching Real Finance was to um a step one was to basically become an on-chain clearing house so that you could massively I'm assuming kind of reduce the price of that, make it better for both parties, but also simultaneously be the kind of middleman that will help both bring both sides on-chain. Is that kind of what I'm understanding or at least that was the original idea? >> Yeah, I mean it's uh I I it might sound a bit uh uh over ambitious, let's say, but it's a whole financial ecosystem, you know, like a secondary financial ecosystem away from the true like from the traditional way to go, you know, you have like SWIFTs, you have, you know, clearing houses and all of those different, let's say,

depositories, uh you know, you have all of those fragments across the board. And what we try to achieve is like bring them all together and work in one network, which is transparent, which is instant, which is cheap, yeah, indeed. But also on the other side accessibility for us is very important as well, you know, I know how a corporate bond, which is quoted for, let's say, 250,000 ticket, you cannot get access to that, not as a retail person, you know, through tokenization, though, and the the the fractionalization, let's say, of that of that amount and

that ticket, you can. So, it's not only about institutions, it's also about access to normal retail investors who actually want to participate in those markets, who want to have something secured, tangible, something which is, you know, you don't need a Bloomberg terminal for 20, 50K, you don't need, let's say, a brokerage company with a license to trade on, etc., etc. Of course, we are the infrastructure, so, you know, whoever is offering it, there is different, let's say, regulations, depending on the country they're based on, and that's on the asset issuers.

But if you structure it together, uh you know, you have the rails, you have the infrastructure, and we have already guaranteed more than 3.5 billion of such assets to be able and to be able to actually access them through real. >> Tell me Tell me Tell me a little bit more about that cuz I know that you guys have tokenization agreements with a few companies. You have a partnership with Anchorage Digital Anchorage Digital. Tell me a little bit more about about some of those deals and kind of like how how those came about and how I mean how big they are if you can share cuz I think that your your one of your agreements is it was is over 100 million dollars of of tokenized assets, right?

>> Yeah, actually it was our first you know MVP we did want to you know already showcase what we're you know what we're capable of before even the mainnet. So yeah, we just released the news. It's 100 million euros by the way. So yeah. >> Oh, wow. >> A bit higher. It's uh >> I'm in Can- I'm in Canada, too. So that's like I you know that's it's like a it's a it's an insane amount of money. >> [laughter] >> Yeah, well I mean you know it is uh it it just showcases like directly how serious we are and how how well we can you know how well we can perform on the network through actually offering something which is stock traded

like it's it's listed on the stock exchange. It's held in custody with a licensed brokerage. We tokenize the assets and we held those we held those assets the tokens within Anchorage Digital for custody. So you know we have covered the custody of the real world assets and then we have covered also the custody of the actual tokenized assets. So everyone is safe you know safe and safe sound and secure. Uh further than furthermore you know we have several different agreements how they came about. To a large extent it was in the beginning through our personal networks and through our you know

traditional financial experience so far. And then through our partners and backers, uh we have two very big equity investors. One is Alpha Fund. It's also a publicly traded fund. Currently, it's valued at around 200 million. The other one is Wiener Bank. It's bank based in Austria. So, you know, we are um we're backed by them. Of course, their network and their clients are, you know, going to utilize our services. Then we got approached by others as well.

Uh it's uh again, when you define clearly the business case, and you know, why institutions can trust this, and why it is safe and secure, uh it's kind of like easier to to adopt them. >> Is there I guess and you guys and the goal for you guys and and you said cuz you mentioned Baynet, um you are building your own L1 to basically run all of these assets, correct? >> In indeed. Yeah. >> Yeah. Why Why I mean, we just I feel like we just discussed I mean, we were talking about tokenized equities earlier this week, um and and how well they're doing on Solana. Obviously, we we've discussed

like RWAs across all the chains. Why go and build your own chain when there's already so many so many options? >> Well, that's the thing, like there are options, but they're not tailored for our assets. They're not tailored for financial instruments, you know? I mean, you have Okay, you do have Solana, you have also meme coins there, you know? Like, this is not like the lay As I said, you need to include business entities and institutions into the space. Like, not only guys come and use our services, but guys, you are an integral part. You are validating those assets. You are validating the security of that system.

And this is where the key is. That's why we built our own chain, you know, because we don't want we don't want just put something on chain and say, "Hey, we just tokenized I don't know, a billion of assets." Who's we? Who's holding custody? Who Who has evaluated those assets, you know? Who is Who is behind them? Is the asset issuer regulated? Is Is he recognizable? Where like what are those assets, you know? >> Right.

>> And those are the questions which we we try to fix and answer. >> Mhm. Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> I guess what does maybe from my understanding like what does what is your chain going to look like? Is it Is it going to be largely like centralized like maybe you can tell us a little bit a bit more about the infrastructure because I know that then in and [clears throat] if you're able to speak to it because in the last year as we've been in the bear market in crypto, obviously we've had this massive like L1 versus L2 debate. There's a general idea that it's like making new chains and and and stuff is not necessarily needed, but I feel like you guys have a really strong case for doing that and and probably a good reason and and I know that there's probably a lot that we don't know that

institutions are looking for when they want to see the infrastructure that they're going to put their their assets on, right? So maybe tell us a little bit more if you can about >> Indeed. I mean [clears throat] >> you know, what's what's going on behind the scenes. >> Again, you know, the chain on itself is I mean, the technology is one thing. >> Mhm. >> The assets which are on that chain, who is utilizing them, the validators, the you know, the the actual business partners. That's where I think you know, the big difference is because we didn't start with uh we're going to build something cool and new. We started with hey guys, you know, there's this technology. We're planning to utilize it

in this and this manner. Would you be interested? And they said, okay, yeah, why not? As long as we're also part of it. Because to be honest, again, you don't put I don't know, like 500 million of your portfolio somewhere where you don't know what's going to happen to it. Uh you you'll have absolutely no uh let's say voting powers, no governance, nothing regarding it. You just put like giving This is basically giving 500 million to somebody who you basically do not know.

So, yeah, we're not centralized. We are permissionless. But we guarantee that you can become like you want to integrate with us, you can become uh a validator, whether it's on the technical side, whether it's on the business uh side, it doesn't it doesn't really matter. But the fact is like you put your money and uh you know, your trust in something which you are a part of. Let's put it that way. When it comes to institutions or at least. Yeah.

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>> So, I guess my question for you, my next question for you is Evo, from a like retail perspective, how is this going to change at least from the from your perspective like what you guys are building, how does this change like their experience when they're using these assets? Is it even a retail product or is it largely institutional product? But even even for the end user for either retail or institutions, how does this actually change kind of their experience? You know, like what does this what is this going to feel like genuinely better for them? >> Well, um it's designed for both, to be honest. Uh it gives uh you know, the bigger players an entry point and uh several technological and time efficiencies which uh you know,

they do not have in the traditional system. But as I said, it gives also access uh to the retail sector as well because of course, you know, how to put it, you know, there are certain companies, uh let's say even Revolut is offering stocks, right? So, you can buy you can trade stocks there. Do you actually hold those stocks? Like do you have uh where are those stocks? Uh do you have a you have an account within a brokerage, within somewhere? Like also the crypto which you buy with Revolut, is it yours? Like do you have the keys, the private keys?

See, it's uh you know, um I don't know, like accessibility and ownership and transparency. Probably these are the key benefits for retail as well, you know, you know you know who has tokenized the asset, you know who the asset issuer is, where the custody is, uh you know, it stays within financial institutions. And at the end of the day, you know, you buy the token and uh at some point you want the asset, you just go to the custodian and say, "Listen, I have this token and you know, I want, let's say, to transfer uh the shares or you know, this corporate bonds to my brokerage account within another broker halfway across the

world." Uh or you can just go that directly and swap the like swap the token. I I mean, it depends also on the asset issuer, but the thing is you actually have access to instruments which have never been uh so easily accessible before, you know, you you have your uh your stable coins and you just um buy an asset which is, let's say, listed in the European uh in the European market or in Asia. And you know, you you know that this token not only represents it, it's actual ownership of it as well.

>> Do you feel like how far away are we from going beyond just traditional finance instruments actually coming on chain? And is this something that even Real is interested in? And I kind of put this in the teaser and we've featured companies on the crypto side like Figure, right, that are doing tokenizing basically the real estate. Is this is is that kind of stuff going to start to develop? Is that something you guys are even interested in working on or are you strictly focused on the finance side? >> Well, initially we're focusing on the financial side because as I said like that's where, you know, our let's say personal expertise lies and that's where, you know, the project is a

bit more, let's how to put it, could be defined as a bit more centralized initially. But as the project grows, you know, our idea is, you know, uh to be again decentralized and managed by the actual business validators and the technical validators. So, you know, we want to meet both of the worlds together and you know, basically they become an independent financial system where, you know, I wouldn't be the sole decision-maker. I wouldn't actually, you know, unless I I put my tokens into our proof of stake and proof and, you know, the governance,

uh I wouldn't be even the ones you need to speak to. Uh we're just focusing on the initial steps and the initial assets to be brought. That's why I mentioned like we have more than 3.5 billion currently, but this is, you know, the ones which we have kind of like made the pathway through, but you know, the market is insanely big. Tokenization can be applied to not only financial instruments, but as you mentioned real estate as well. Uh we know a lot of projects. Some of them are actually already part of our ecosystem uh who are focusing on real estate tokenization and, you know, they're

going to be basically integrating with real and putting uh you know, value there. So, my personal opinion is that 5 years from now basically the majority of any kind of asset which is, let's say, cash flow generating, you know, which can which can be to a certain extent traded, and which can keep value, uh is going to transition onto the blockchain.

>> Definitely. Tell me about asset, your token. >> Well, asset is, of course, you know, as with any other chain, it's an integral part of of our project. It is basically a utility token, but it's mainly used, you know, for transaction fees, for minting of smart contracts, minting of, you know, tokens, bringing the assets on chain. All of those, you know, steps require asset. So, the more the value and the, you know, the more assets which come onto our chain, the more demand there would be for asset in order to, you know, basically facilitate those transactions, facilitate

those, let's say, that that value which is coming on chain. And, yeah, we're starting with 100 million, but by the end of the year, it's going to be 3.5 billion. Uh you can imagine, you know, like all of the different rotations and different transactions which are going to be uh you know, included into that. But, again, this is just scratching the surface. The important actually segment of the token is the proof of stake, and that, you know, institutions, asset issuers, insurers, credit scorers, all of them will be required to have a proof of stake in order to be

validators, and in order to be uh network decision makers as well. >> Mhm. >> Uh so, you know, again, given the the vastness of the market, I think that you know, asset is just basically the first step towards let's say enabling this financial this alternative financial system basically.

>> And where can people find that token right now, Ivo, if they want to get in? >> Yeah, actually you know, like we have a pretty big pool on Uniswap. We don't want to insert confidence into the into the community, but also we're very as as we have spoken for the whole time period, we're very institutional as well. So, you know, we listed on Kraken first exchange to get banking license and then we listed also on KuCoin and MEXC. So, you know, there's def several different pathways, OKX as well.

So, people can easily get it from anywhere in the world, companies as well. They do prefer central exchanges to be honest. So, you know, that's we have kind of like made it easy for both parties, institutions, financial institutions, but also retail as well and also of course crypto native people as well. >> Great. And any any plans to put it on other exchanges or any anywhere else they can find it?

>> Oh, yeah, okay. That's that's a great question. I don't want to spill too much beans or you know, too much alpha, but yes, indeed, you know, like we do want to be global network. We do want uh access and give access to people around the world to our network. So, indeed, yes, there's a couple of exchanges coming as well with already opened uh let's say conversations and confirmations, but I don't want to say too much.

Uh you know, there is a US one, a Korea one, etc. So, you know, different regions we want to take basically have global access and global venues uh to be traded yeah. >> Got it. Great. Well, sounds like you guys have pretty ambitious plans. My last question for you, Ivo, is you know, of those $33 trillion $33 trillion of assets, how much how much do you guys want to capture? >> Uh I think around 10% would be would be probably would be probably enough uh for uh the network to be called a complete success.

And I actually think it's even you know, it is even possible, to be honest. E-trading uh all of those, you know, early early stage uh companies back in before like let's say Amazon, Google, etc. All of them were very ambitious in the beginning and everybody thought look, you know, this is impossible for you, but look where they are. I'm not comparing ourselves to it, but uh it's just you know, again, it's not a revolution cuz people are often referring to revolution. For me, uh Rio is the evolution evolution of of finance. It's not something completely drastical

which never before has been used, but it's a mixture between the two worlds. So, it's the natural evolution of the financial system. So, I think adoption will be uh would be great here. >> Great. Right on. Well, best of luck to you, man. I think it's very ambitious, but clearly you guys have a lot of great deals in place. You've got a token out there for people to get interested in the token if they if they want to check it out more. Um where can people find the project? >> Uh of course our socials. So we're very active on X. Uh we're active on Telegram as well.

But um I'll just uh even if you just Google Real Real Finance, you'll you'll find tons of information regarding us and uh you know, you'll see my face quite a bit. Um which I don't know if it's a good thing or not. Uh but uh yeah, um I mean, yeah, it's it's we're institutional and we want to be dogs. We want to be, you know, visible in the space and uh you know, it's very important for our partners as well. That's why they're entrusting us.

Uh you know, basically in the next couple of months with a couple of billions. So, yeah, it's something big. >> That's amazing. Great. Well, thank you Ivo. Thank Thank you for your thoughts and best of luck to you guys with uh with Real Finance. >> Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're [music] trading each event? Subscribe to our channel, join the Milk Road Daily and Pro newsletters, and start investing like the top 1%. [music] This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.