Sygnum survey finds 68% of APAC investors already hold tokenised RWAs
Key points
- Sygnum's April 2026 survey of 212 HNWI and professional investors across Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea found 68% already hold tokenised RWAs, though the report itself flags potential inflation from stablecoin misclassification.
- Tokenised equities are the preferred asset class at 66% overall, with professionals markedly more interested in tokenised PE/VC (48%) than HNWIs (25%), who lean towards private credit.
- Over 80% of planned inflows involve fresh capital rather than portfolio reallocation alone, with modal ticket sizes of USD 500,000 to USD 1 million and a weighted average of approximately USD 1.1 million among professionals.
- Structural barriers including legal ownership uncertainty (51% pre-allocation, 40% post), thin secondary-market liquidity (43% flat across groups), and regulatory uncertainty persist even among investors already holding tokenised RWAs.
- Forty-eight percent of respondents expect 15-30% of capital markets to be on-chain within three to five years, with bullish sentiment rising from 45% at a one-year horizon to 55% at five-plus years.
A Sygnum Pte Ltd survey of 212 high-net-worth and professional investors across Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea finds that 68% already hold tokenised real-world assets (RWAs), with a further 12% actively evaluating exposure. The report, fielded in April via an anonymous, invitation-only panel, covers respondents from Singapore (76%), Hong Kong (22%), and South Korea (2%), split roughly evenly between high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) and professionals allocating on behalf of hedge funds, asset managers, banks, family offices, and private equity and venture capital firms. The authors themselves flag the 68% figure as warranting scrutiny, acknowledging that some respondents may have counted stablecoins as RWA exposure, while arguing the number is unlikely to rest on stablecoins alone given the regional availability of tokenised gold and money-market funds.
The demand signal is sharper when filtered by crypto ownership: 80% of crypto holders also hold tokenised RWAs, against 11% of non-crypto holders, and 97% of RWA holders also hold crypto. Tokenised equities lead asset-class preference at 66% overall, with professionals significantly more drawn to tokenised private equity and venture capital (48%) than HNWIs (25%). Portfolio diversification is the dominant stated rationale at 72%, followed by access to new markets and yield on idle assets; 24/7 settlement and secondary liquidity ranked last, which the report attributes to the buy-and-hold character of currently dominant tokenised RWA products.
Allocation intent is concentrated in the 5-10% portfolio band, cited by 56% of respondents, with 12% targeting above 10% over a 12-18 month horizon. Crucially, more than 80% of intended inflows involve fresh capital rather than reallocation alone, a finding that suggests tokenised RWAs are drawing incremental money rather than cannibalising existing positions. Barriers show a bifurcated profile: investor-level concerns such as lack of regulated custody and absence of track record fall sharply among those already allocated, while structural concerns around legal ownership rights, thin secondary-market liquidity, and regulatory uncertainty persist even among experienced holders, pointing to the market-infrastructure gaps that remain unresolved regardless of individual familiarity.