Market turmoil hits RWA tokens as crypto experiences a major selloff, yet sector shows resilience.
TL;DR…
- Market Overview: Escalating tensions in the Middle East triggered a broad sell-off; Bitcoin briefly dipped under $60k, while Ethereum saw an 11% drop in value.
- RWA Recap: Most RWA tokens are down this week; top performers include Nexera up 17.5%, while TokenFi saw the steepest drop at 21.2%.
- Sector Analysis: Despite market-wide losses, the RWA sector showed relative strength, with smaller losses compared to AI and GameFi, which saw heavier declines.
- Weekly News: Franklin Templeton launched tokenized assets on Aptos; Kin Capital rolled out a $100M tokenized real estate fund, and Ethena Labs introduced a new stablecoin backed by BlackRock.
If you’re exposed to the market, you probably feel like we have been here before.
Escalating issues in the Middle East has caused volatility throughout the crypto market and the vast majority of assets are now in the red in the last 7 days.
Unfortunately, the RWA sector hasn’t managed to buck the trend.
So, let’s jump in and see what is going on.
Did you miss last week’s RWA update? Check out here.
Market Overview
With tension once again heating up in the Middle East, investors have been spooked into a sell-off and altcoins are largely paying the price for it.
Over the last 7 days, Bitcoin briefly crashed back under $60,000 and is currently down 5.5% for the week. Meanwhile, Ethereum (ETH) is trading at close to $2,300 after seeing 11% wiped off its market cap.
RWA tokens haven’t escaped unscathed. Practically all RWA assets have retraced their recent gains and are now worse than where they started last week. Though a few have managed to buck the trend — more on these shortly.
The market has largely flipped bearish during this time, the CoinMarketCap Fear & Greed Index has now fallen to 36. The index has now been either neutral or fearful territory for the last two months after a brief period of greed in July.
RWA Movements Recap
The last week has been a punishing time for most RWA tokens. Despite a brief rally towards the end of last week, the vast majority of RWA tokens are now in the red on the 7-day chart.
Here’s how the biggest winners and losers performed:
Worst Performers
The worst-performing RWA tokens saw their values slashed by ~20% apiece. For comparison, the average cryptocurrency (inc. both Bitcoin and altcoins) lost 6.7% over the same period.
Best Performers
- Nexera (NXRA) up 17.5%
- Mantra (OM) up 4.3%
- Axelar (AXL) up 2.1%
- Realio Network (RIO) up 0.5%
The best-performing RWA tokens showed relative strength in a weak market, with a handful of projects managing to stay in the green over the last week.
Did we miss your favorite RWA token? Click here to check out a full list of RWA tokens.
Key Observations
As we previously touched on, the market as a whole has been down over the last week. Despite this, the real-world asset sector is currently holding up better than most other sectors according to its DefiLlama mcap-weighted category performance
The sector currently has an average mcap-weighted loss of 2.3% in this period. For comparison, the AI sector is down 7.2% whereas GameFi is down 6.7%.
This relative strength is particularly seen in the smaller RWA tokens, whereas bigger players have suffered the most.
Source: DeFiLlama Narrative Tracker
Weekly News Roundup
As one of the most actively developed and funded crypto sectors, the RWA space always has a constant flurry of project updates, significant events and general news to cover.
Here, we’ve summarized the most important stories to help you catch up quickly:
Franklin Templeton Launches Tokenized Asset on Aptos: Global asset management firm Franklin Templeton has launched its tokenized U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) on the Aptos blockchain to enhance integration between traditional finance and decentralized finance.
Asset Management Firm Goes Big on Tokenized Real Estate: Kin Capital launched a $100 million tokenized real estate debt fund on the Chintai blockchain, initially offering a $5 million tranche with plans for further offerings through 2024-2025. The minimum investment is $50,000 with ambitious annual return targets of 14-15%.
Ethena Labs to Launch BlackRock Fund-backed Stablecoin: In partnership with Securitize, Ethena Labs announced the launch of UStb, a new stablecoin backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund. The UStb stablecoin will be separate from Ethena's existing synthetic stablecoin USDe, providing a differentiated product for investors.
Australian Bank Joins Singapore RWA Initiative: One of Australia's largest banks, ANZ, has joined Singapore's RWA initiative, termed “Project Guardian”, to test the potential utility of on-chain real-world assets. The collaboration will also involve Chainlink Lab’s CCIP technology to facilitate cross-chain transfers of tokenized RWAs.
And that’s a wrap for this week’s RWA recap. Let’s hope we have more positive news to report next week :)
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