🏢 Real estate, bonds, equities: all of it can be a token on a blockchain. Technically, that's been true for a while.

So why have Japanese companies barely touched it? Because nobody had written down how. In March 2026, a working group formed to fill that gap.

"The Technology Exists. The Rules Don't."

On March 9, 2026, the Ethereum Japan association announced the Digital Assets Working Group (DAWG). Its remit: map out the practical options and infrastructure requirements for Japanese companies putting real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoins on chain, tokenized equities included.

Six organizations joined at launch: Fracton Ventures, Mynawallet, PGL (PG Labs), RIKYU, Gluefi, and Allied Architects, the last of which serves as secretariat and trades on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth market. The group expects participation from banks, brokerages, payments firms and fintechs.

At the launch event, Ethereum Japan's Sho H. laid out the diagnosis in a keynote. Tokenizing equities is already technically possible, he said; what matters isn't the tokenization itself but building the workflows and standards that let companies handle digital assets as ordinary business operations. Reducing the uncertainty companies face when entering the on-chain economy, he argued, is the real job.

The barrier isn't the technology. It's the absence of standardized operating practice. That's what DAWG is aiming at.

Where the Work Actually Jams

What is it that nobody has settled? A partial list of what the group is chewing on.

Access control: who inside a company holds and manages an on-chain asset, and how do private keys and approval workflows get structured. Accounting treatment: where does a tokenized asset sit on the books, and how does that reconcile with existing standards. KYC and AML: at what level. And audit-ready operations, meaning how you present and explain on-chain transaction records to an external auditor.

None of these are worth solving alone. The cost and the risk are both too high for a single firm. So member companies will draft practical guidance per use case, with the goal of publishing public-interest criteria and an implementation framework.

The calendar is set. Kickoff in March 2026, with expert discussions and interviews with domestic companies. A report on issues and next steps was slated for June. Progress updates at ETH Tokyo in September and Devcon in November, plugging the domestic work into international debate. Building local standards while talking to the global community, in parallel. (As of this update, the June report doesn't appear to have been published.)

The RWA Market Is at $33.5 Billion

Behind all of this is the growth of the global RWA market.

Tokenizing RWAs means representing real-world assets, real estate, bonds, equities, commodities, as tokens on a blockchain. Fractional ownership, 24-hour trading, things that traditional financial plumbing makes hard.

The tracker rwa.xyz put on-chain distributed value, excluding stablecoins, at roughly $33.5 billion as of July 8, 2026. In March 2026 it was about $26.4 billion, four times the roughly $6.6 billion of a year earlier, and Q1 2026 alone added about 30%. One caveat worth holding onto: the representative asset value those tokens point at is around $388.55 billion, a very different number from what's actually settled on chain.

Six categories have each cleared $1 billion: private credit, commodities, US Treasuries, corporate bonds, non-US government debt, and institutional alternative funds. Tokenized Treasuries lead, at roughly $12.88 billion by rwa.xyz's count in early April 2026. The emblem of the category is BlackRock's BUIDL, launched on Ethereum in March 2024 with Securitize as transfer agent, at around $2.8 billion in Q2 2026.

Stablecoins are counted separately, at about $307 billion in market cap as of May 2026. One layer represents value; the other moves it. You need both before atomic settlement and always-on markets mean anything.

There's a soft spot in the numbers, too. Most tokenized assets get held, not traded; secondary volume is thin. Putting something on chain and creating liquidity for it are not the same act.

Why Ethereum

DAWG's choice of chain isn't arbitrary.

Public rwa.xyz data had roughly $15 billion in tokenized assets sitting on Ethereum as of February 16, 2026, more than 60% of the market. Around 35 major US financial and tech firms are reportedly launching or evaluating tokenization services on it. BlackRock's January 2026 report pointed to Ethereum as the network positioned to benefit from the tokenization era.

Which means that for a Japanese company, plugging into the international conversation effectively means plugging into Ethereum's conventions. Hence ETH Tokyo in September and Devcon in November as the group's waypoints.

The Ground Is Moving in Japan Too

The regulatory picture has shifted hard in the past year.

In April 2026, the Financial Services Agency submitted a bill moving crypto trading out of the Payment Services Act and into the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act. It repositions crypto as a financial instrument distinct from securities, tightens enforcement against unregistered operators, mandates information disclosure at issuance, strengthens business conduct rules, and creates insider trading regulation for the first time. Even the license name changes, from "crypto exchange operator" to "crypto trading operator."

On July 14, 2026, the bill cleared the Upper House Committee on Financial Affairs by majority vote. Only the plenary vote remains; once enacted, it takes effect within roughly a year of promulgation. The committee also unanimously adopted 14 supplementary resolutions, including a demand that the government make clear that regulation is not a government endorsement.

Tax policy already ran ahead. The revised Income Tax Act, enacted and promulgated on March 31, 2026, applies separate taxation at 20.315% to gains on designated crypto assets, conditional on the FIEA amendment passing and taking effect. Timing is defined as January 1 of the year following the amendment's effective date, which points to January 2028. Down from a top marginal rate of 55%, with a new three-year loss carryforward.

The FSA's own briefing materials put the sector at 28 registered operators, 14,117,282 accounts, and ¥3.15 trillion in customer deposits as of the end of March 2026. This isn't a fringe anymore.

The private sector is moving in the same window. In February 2026 it was reported that Nomura Holdings and Daiwa Securities would work with the three megabanks, MUFG, SMBC and Mizuho, on trials of a framework for settling equity and bond trades in stablecoins; Satsuki Katayama, the minister for financial services, publicly backed the effort. In August 2025, SBI Holdings announced plans for a marketplace where equities, bonds, real estate and more could trade as tokens on a blockchain.

Can They Fill the Gap?

DAWG looks like a niche, domestic thing. What it's actually attempting is the step before the step: making it possible for companies to move once the law is finally in place.

Law decides what you may do. It doesn't decide how. Access control, accounting treatment, explaining yourself to an auditor: somebody has to build the template. With the FIEA amendment one vote from passage and the tax date already on the calendar, the absence of that template is getting conspicuous.

What ends up in the June report, or doesn't, matters more than it sounds like it should. That's roughly where the question of whether Japanese companies actually go on chain gets decided.

Does your country have practical standards for companies handling on-chain assets? Did the regulator write them, or did the industry?

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