Digital assets are beginning to appear on the balance sheet.

(Image caption) DavosWeb3 2027 will be held in Davos, Switzerland on January 20, 2027, focusing on global finance, digital assets, artificial intelligence and institutional integration, and exploring the new round of changes after Web3 enters the mainstream financial infrastructure.

The evolution of vocabulary behind a round table

On the afternoon of January 20, 2027, DavosWeb3 plans to hold a three-hour Institutional Roundtable in Davos, Switzerland. The officially announced time slot is from 3 PM to 6 PM. While the event is not large in scale, the combination of invited participants is valuable for research: sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, policymakers, and entrepreneurs in the fields of digital assets and artificial intelligence are all placed within the same discussion framework. The official topic is summarized as the strategic intersection of global finance and AI, and the term "systemic integration" is used to describe the new stage that digital assets are facing.

This word is more interesting than the scale of the event.

Over the past decade, the crypto industry has coined a whole new language, including Bitcoin, DeFi, DAO, NFT, Web3, and Layer 2, with capital and technology growing rapidly alongside these concepts. Today, the vocabulary entering regulatory documents and meetings of major financial institutions is different: ownership, custody, finality of settlement, investor protection, capital requirements, accounting treatment, liquidity, counterparties, and legal liability.

As financial innovation approaches the core of the system, the market must answer some age-old questions: How do on-chain records connect with court-recognized property rights? How are official shareholder registers updated after the transfer of tokenized securities? What can token holders pursue if the underlying asset entity goes bankrupt? Once artificial intelligence is authorized to manage funds for companies, how are authorization and responsibility defined?

These problems, though not as dramatic as a bull market, form the basis for the normal functioning of the financial system.

Over the past three years, the topics of DavosWeb3 have changed.

The first DavosWeb3 in 2025 will still have a distinct crypto industry flavor, with public topics including the coexistence of Bitcoin, crypto and fiat, and how Web3 can move beyond the recurring discussion of "use cases".

The same year's publication, "Ushering a New Billion into the Global System," began to expand its research scope to include financial exclusion, discussing the approximately 1.4 billion unbanked adults worldwide, as well as issues such as identity, cost, geographical segregation, and financial trust. The Davos Declaration proposed seven principles, including Transparency, Accountability, Inclusion, and Decentralization, hoping to establish a framework of accountability for the rapidly expanding digital economy.

These documents have no regulatory force and should not be exaggerated as global governance rules, but they leave a clear timeline: an industry that once emphasized decentralization and permissionlessness has gradually begun to talk about governance, responsibility, and institutional participation.

By 2027, sovereign wealth funds and private equity firms had entered the core invited group.

Three years is a short time, but the changes in participants and vocabulary are worth recording.

(Image caption) The flags and snow-capped mountains outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, correspond to the scenario at DavosWeb3 2027 where sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, policymakers, and AI and digital asset entrepreneurs are placed in the same institutional discussion framework.

The SEC begins to address the legal structure of tokenized securities.

In January 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued the Statement on Tokenized Securities, which defines tokenized security as securities that meet the definition of federal securities laws and exist or are represented in the form of crypto assets, and distinguishes between two types of tokenization structures: issuer-led tokenization and third-party tokenization.

This classification directly addresses the core issue of RWA: what rights does a token actually represent?

It could be the digital form of the security itself, or simply an interest in custodied assets, or it could only offer some kind of price exposure. All three products can look like a token on a mobile screen, but their legal status is completely different when it comes to dividends, voting, default, bankruptcy, and asset recourse.

Tokenization can change how assets are recorded and traded, but it does not automatically eliminate securities laws, property laws, and bankruptcy laws.

This boundary will have a long-term impact on the RWA market.

NYSE begins to integrate blockchain into existing market rules.

Between April and May 2026, several exchanges within the NYSE system submitted rule changes to the SEC to allow securities to be traded using tokenized forms within the existing exchange framework.

This is very different from simply "putting stocks on the blockchain".

The US stock market is already highly electronic. Tokenization, if it's just a change in recording method, has limited impact; the real complexity lies in the market structure: what functions do exchanges, broker-dealers, transfer agents, custodians, and clearinghouses each retain; how are on-chain records synchronized with formal ownership; and in what form of currency are securities ultimately settled?

What the NYSE started researching was actually how to integrate blockchain into the existing financial system.

(Image caption) The New York Stock Exchange trading floor reflects that the NYSE is integrating tokenized securities into existing exchange, brokerage, transfer agent, and clearing and settlement rules, rather than simply putting stocks on the blockchain.

DTCC's actions are more noteworthy.

If I were to look for a case study that best illustrates institutional evolution, I would look at the DTCC.

The reason is simple. According to publicly available information from DTCC, in 2025, the total value of securities transactions it handled was approximately US$4.7 trillion, and the value of securities for which its subsidiary DTC provided custody and asset services was approximately US$114 trillion.

In December 2025, DTC received a No-Action Letter from the SEC, enabling it to provide tokenization services in a controlled environment, covering Russell 1000 constituent stocks, some major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasury bonds.

By July 2026, DTC's custodial assets had completed token conversion and multiple transaction tests in a real production environment, involving processes such as collateral, securities lending, US Treasury bonds, repos, stock delivery payments, and central counterparty margin.

This indicates that RWA is entering another phase.

Early markets were concerned with whether an asset could be tokenized; DTCC deals with how existing financial assets can obtain new digital representations and liquidity methods while retaining ownership, investor protection, and market rights.

For a market infrastructure institution that manages over $100 trillion in assets, this is not a concept demonstration, but an institutional engineering project.

(Image caption) The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) headquarters building in Washington, D.C., which is the starting point for the SEC's legal classification of tokenized securities, distinguishing between issuer-led and third-party tokenization, and defining the rights that tokens represent.

RWA's threshold is on the balance sheet.

The market often uses on-chain RWA market capitalization to measure industry progress.

I am more concerned with another metric: how many tokenized assets can be held by banks, insurance companies, pension funds, asset management companies, and sovereign wealth funds in accordance with existing risk control, accounting, and regulatory systems.

When large financial institutions allocate assets, they must simultaneously address legal nature, valuation, liquidity, custody, counterparties, capital requirements, auditing, taxation, and exit arrangements. Banks also need to consider the Basel Capital Framework, funds need to deal with NAV, custody, and transfer agency, and insurance companies face even stricter capital and asset recognition requirements.

The fact that a token can be traded does not mean that it is eligible to be included in the balance sheet of a large institution.

Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and insurance companies manage long-term capital, and what they need are legally verifiable property rights, auditable assets, clear cash flow, and infrastructure that can still function under stress.

This may be the most important hurdle for RWA before it can truly enter institutional finance.

The United States and Hong Kong are pursuing different institutional paths.

The US is primarily moving along the lines of the SEC, NYSE, DTC, and existing securities market architecture.

Hong Kong, however, takes a different approach.

In 2023, the Hong Kong government completed a trial of tokenized green bonds; the second issuance of digital green bonds in 2024 amounted to approximately HK$6 billion, encompassing Hong Kong dollars, renminbi, US dollars, and euros. By April 2026, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) further announced a secondary trading framework for tokenized SFC-authorised investment products, beginning to regulate trading channels, pricing, liquidity, information disclosure, and customer access.

As of the end of March 2026, there were 13 tokenized retail products in Hong Kong, with related assets under management of approximately HK$10.8 billion.

The United States is integrating tokenized securities into its existing national securities market, while Hong Kong is gradually connecting government bonds, tokenized funds, licensed intermediaries, and the virtual asset market.

Neither path abandons the existing financial system.

Fund managers, custodians, KYC, regulatory disclosure, and investor protection still exist; the changes mainly occur at the asset recording, trading, and settlement levels.

(Image caption) The night view of Hong Kong's Central financial district and the International Finance Centre buildings showcase another institutional path for Hong Kong to promote RWA through tokenized green bonds, SFC-approved products, and licensed intermediaries.

After asset tokenization, the next question is what currency to use for settlement.

Recent research by the Bank for International Settlements has brought another issue to the forefront: even after a security can be transferred on-chain, a reliable settlement currency is still needed.

BIS’s unified ledger concept aims to integrate tokenized commercial bank money, central bank reserves, and other tokenized assets into a programmable financial architecture while maintaining central bank money as a trust anchor.

One of the core concepts is "singleness of money".

If different stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and different blockchains each form their own closed liquidity pools, market efficiency may improve, and the monetary system may become more fragmented.

Project Agorá is testing whether tokenized commercial bank deposits and central bank reserves can jointly process cross-border wholesale payments.

This approach differs from the early Crypto idea of bypassing banks. BIS chose to retain the two-tier banking structure and then integrate programmability and tokenization.

There is currently no answer as to which architecture will prevail in the future.

Increased efficiency can also create new concentration risks.

Tokenization can shorten settlement time, reduce manual reconciliation, and provide a higher degree of programmability.

The IMF study also cautions that these improvements could concentrate risks at new points in the market.

With shorter settlement cycles, liquidity needs become more immediate; if smart contracts, automatic redemptions, and margin calls operate simultaneously during periods of market stress, fund flows may become faster. As manual processes decrease, the market's reliance on code, oracle data, and underlying data actually increases.

As trading hours approach 24/7, financial institutions need to adjust their liquidity, operations, and risk control systems accordingly.

Therefore, RWA cannot be judged solely by market size.

It is also a redistribution of risk structure.

AI may become a new user of the financial system.

DavosWeb3 2027 grouped AI and global finance together, but the real intersection worth studying lies in financial behavior itself.

If AI agents can perform payments, purchases, cash management, risk analysis, and even investment transactions for individuals or businesses in the future, they will need financial permissions.

The system must know who the AI represents, how much money it can mobilize, what assets it is allowed to purchase, which actions require renewed human approval, when permissions expire, and how to leave auditable records for each operation.

Today, these issues are primarily addressed through bank accounts, corporate identities, APIs, internal controls, and legal contracts. Asset tokenization and programmability add a new possibility: some asset rights, transaction terms, payment rules, and compliance requirements can be transformed into financial logic that machines can read and execute.

Whether AI will gradually become a new user of financial infrastructure remains a question that requires long-term verification.

However, if this path holds true, the value of RWA will no longer depend solely on whether people are willing to buy tokens, but also on whether the assets, rules, and permissions can be directly read and used by the next generation of financial systems.

(Image caption) The BIS Basel headquarters tower symbolizes the infrastructure restructuring undertaken by the BIS around the unified ledger, currency unity, and tokenized bank money and central bank reserves for cross-border settlement.

Davos only provided an early signal

DavosWeb3 2027 is not an official event of the World Economic Forum; to be precise, it is planned to be held in Davos during World Economic Forum Week.

It also currently lacks sufficient evidence to support a comparison of its size or institutional influence with major global financial summits.

When reviewing publicly available information, GFM did not use content on its official website that was contradictory or had not yet been independently verified. Partnerships should not alter the media's standards for fact-checking.

I still think this roundtable discussion is worth observing.

The 2025 white paper discusses approximately 1.4 billion unbanked adults; by 2027, sovereign wealth funds, private equity, policy architects, and AI are all on the same table.

If these terms are ultimately translated into capital allocation, product design, and financial rules, they will become a valuable institutional thread to follow.

Ultimately, it still comes down to property, responsibility, and trust.

After researching the SEC, NYSE, DTCC, Hong Kong, BIS, and IMF, I still think of myself as an ordinary investor.

Someday in the future, he might buy a fund on his phone, with the fund share registration system using a distributed ledger, the payment instrument possibly being a tokenized bank deposit, and an AI assistant helping him read documents, analyze risks, and execute some transactions.

He may not need to know how the underlying technology works.

He is more concerned about whether his assets are protected by law, whether he can recover his assets after the platform collapses, whether transactions and settlements are still valid during periods of severe market volatility, and who is responsible if AI makes a mistake or oversteps its authority.

Technology is constantly changing, but the core issues that financial systems address have long existed: property rights, liability, risk, and trust.

Today, RWA has moved beyond the stage of mere technology demonstration. The SEC has begun establishing legal classifications, the NYSE has amended market rules, DTC's custodial assets have completed actual token trading tests, tokenized retail products in Hong Kong have reached an asset management scale of over HK$10 billion, and the BIS is testing cross-border settlement of tokenized bank currencies and central bank reserves.

The next phase of competition will be even more difficult.

Technology companies must prove that their systems can withstand the demands of the financial system; traditional financial institutions must prove that their existing infrastructure can absorb new technological capabilities; and regulators need to re-examine the boundaries between efficiency, innovation, financial stability, and investor protection.

The final question remains simple:

Who owns the assets? Who sets the rules? Who bears the risks? And who can maintain settlement and trust after a crisis?

These problems are more old than any technical name.

Disclaimer

This article is for news research and institutional analysis only and does not constitute investment, legal, or trading advice. Information is derived from publicly available sources; market conditions and regulatory developments are subject to change, and specific details should be based on relevant official documents.