a16z Partner Wuollet: Tokenization Makes Funds More Efficient and Globally Accessible
Guy Wuollet, a general partner at a16z crypto, stated that tokenization can make funds more efficient and easier to access globally. The crypto industry has long believed that "if you build it, they will come," but now on-chain finance is actively bringing products to users.
He previously pointed out the killer use case of tokenization as collateral liquidity, believing that synthetic products can sometimes be more attractive than tokenized spot assets when pursuing maximum global distribution. He also emphasized that what Wall Street refers to as digital asset transformation truly inherits the composability of crypto: once assets are on shared programmable infrastructure, settlements become faster, reconciliations are reduced, and products can be directly assembled without having to rebuild the backend each time.
He advocates for credit to be initiated natively on-chain, rather than first lending off-chain and then packaging it into tokens. Loan service costs often account for 1% to 3% of the outstanding balance, and on-chain initiation can eliminate backend costs and enhance composability. Regarding on-chain emerging market stocks, he values the accessibility of the products themselves, rather than just the mirror channels for U.S. assets.
His empirical focus includes tokenized funds, stablecoins, on-chain government bonds, and RWA perpetual contracts. On-chain RWA perpetual annualized trading once reached a scale of $1.4 trillion, accounting for half of the trading volume on some perpetual exchanges. Traditional markets are constrained by listing committees and geographical segmentation, while blockchain simultaneously removes issuance permissions and distribution boundaries.
a16z crypto continues to bet on infrastructure and application layers, establishing the investment standard of "the origin is on-chain, not a copy on-chain." The efficiency of fund tokenization comes from distributing without intermediaries, automating share registration, and putting compliance terms on-chain, rather than just changing the packaging.
In terms of market mechanisms, buyers are users who cannot open U.S. brokerage accounts but can hold stablecoin wallets, as well as institutions that want to use shares as collateral for turnover; sellers are traditional fund stacks that still rely on transfer agents, custodians, and sales channels for fees. This is driven by distribution rather than mere speculation, with funds flowing from geographically fragmented fund shares to on-chain shares that can be transferred 24/7 and composited into lending and perpetual contracts. Beneficiaries include issuers and trading venues, stablecoin clearing, and compliance tokenization service providers, while those under pressure are intermediaries that rely on geographical licenses and manual reconciliations for income.
Source: Public Information
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Wuollet's position determines that he discusses market supply rather than retail narratives. a16z crypto integrates tokenization, stablecoins, and on-chain credit initiation into the same production line: first laying the settlement layer as software, then allowing fund shares, loans, and risk units to grow on top of it. He has written that the digitalization of finance has finally arrived, with the core not being faster transfers, but ownership written into the same composable ledger.
The capital path is venture capital checks directed to exchanges capable of global distribution, perpetual engines, tokenized funds, and on-chain credit protocols, rather than to yet another project that "photographs property deeds on-chain." The motivation is that traditional listing and sales committees have restricted market supply, and blockchain has for the first time allowed supply to chase global potential demand. Strategically, what is needed is issuance rights plus trading rights, as historically, category-level returns have fallen at these two ends.
Comparative examples include Franklin's on-chain money market fund, BlackRock's tokenized government bonds, and Hyperliquid's perpetuals for U.S. stocks and commodities. The industry phase has shifted from "building the chain and waiting for people to come" to "delivering existing risk units to populations without brokerage accounts," with the expansion focus on distribution rather than proving that the ledger can run.
The structural change is the transfer of pricing power: whoever controls permissionless issuance and the global front end sets the risk pricing. The mechanism is that once geographical licenses and listing committees become ineffective, fund efficiency no longer comes from management fee discounts, but from shares that can be used as collateral, can be atomically settled, and can be directly subscribed to from any time zone.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
Building well does not wait for people to come; distribution is the product.
On-chain copies are worthless; the on-chain origin reduces costs.
Once market supply is permissionless, demand will line up by itself.