Throughout the week, much of the crypto media pushed the same alarming headline: “China bans RWA tokenization.” A closer look at the People’s Bank of China’s official communication tells a very different, and far more nuanced, story.
What Beijing actually reaffirmed was not a new restriction, but the continuation of its existing policy: the prohibition of cryptocurrencies treated as virtual currencies, and the ban on unauthorized offshore yuan-denominated stablecoins. Nothing new there. What China did not ban, and this is the key point, is the tokenization of onshore real-world assets. On the contrary, regulators are now working on a dedicated framework for these instruments.
For the first time, Beijing is clearly drawing a line between speculative crypto assets and RWA tied to the real economy. As Louis Wan from Unified Labs pointed out, this separation represents a major breakthrough and a true milestone for China’s RWA market. The signal is clear: blockchain technology is acceptable when it supports tangible, regulated assets.
This approach is not unique. The European Union took a similar path with MiCA, explicitly separating crypto assets from tokenized real-world assets. The difference is that Europe is already ahead. Since December 2024, MiCA has enabled the issuance of CASP licenses across 27 countries. Beyond that, the DLT Pilot Regime already allows the operation of fully on-chain trading and settlement systems, including atomic delivery-versus-payment, native on-chain record-keeping, and direct investor access. This is not a sandbox experiment. It is embedded in law.
MiCA is often heavily criticized on Crypto Twitter, yet the EU remains the only jurisdiction where a fully on-chain securities settlement infrastructure can legally operate today. China is now drawing the line. Europe drew it earlier and has already started issuing licenses.
This is exactly the regulatory environment projects like Dusk Network have been building for. The DLT-TSS infrastructure is already live, documented, and aligned with these requirements. Regulated tokenization is no longer a theoretical concept. It is becoming the standard.