Arizona Tribune - OneAsset Founder Sonia Shaw Calls for Separation of Roles in Institutional RWA Tokenization

"In traditional capital markets, the roles of issuer, custodian, and exchange are separated to protect investors and ensure market integrity," Shaw said. "When one platform controls the entire vertical issuing the token, holding the private keys, and operating the trading venue, it reintroduces single points of failure and self‑dealing risks that markets spent decades eliminating."

Shaw's remarks come as several RWA tokenization platforms have expanded their offerings to include both asset origination and secondary market operations. While such vertical integration is often marketed as a seamless user experience, Shaw argues it undermines the transparency and risk controls that institutional investors require.

"Institutional capital is allergic to concentration risk. You cannot ask a Tier-1 bank to deploy billions of dollars into a system where the same entity decides which assets get listed, how they are custodied, and what trading rules apply all without independent oversight," Shaw said. "That's not market infrastructure. It's a walled garden with concentrated control."

OneAsset takes a different approach. The company focuses exclusively on the upstream layer of tokenization: structuring assets within bankruptcy‑remote SPVs, managing compliance and reporting, and ensuring tokenized instruments are "regulator‑ready" from the start. The platform is custody‑agnostic and venue‑neutral, designed to integrate with any regulated custodian or exchange.

Shaw described this modular model as "building infrastructure, not a monopoly." She added that true institutional adoption will depend on neutral, interoperable layers rather than platforms that attempt to own the entire value chain.

"The goal shouldn't be to replace traditional banks with crypto‑native versions," Shaw said. "It should be to create an open, competitive infrastructure that lets banks, custodians, and exchanges plug in without surrendering client relationships or taking on new concentration risk."

OneAsset's commitment to institutional standards is reflected in its 'Compliance-First' roadmap. The platform is currently finalizing its regulatory framework and will move from its current private pilot phase to full commercial availability only once all necessary approvals are secured, ensuring a fully de-risked environment for its partners.

About OneAsset

OneAsset is a tokenization infrastructure provider turning institutional‑grade real estate into compliant, liquid, and globally accessible digital assets. By focusing on legal engineering, asset servicing, and partner‑friendly interoperability, OneAsset builds the "rails" that enable banks, custodians, and exchanges to offer tokenized real estate with confidence. OneAsset is currently in a pre‑license stage and is not authorized to offer tokenization services to the public.

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SOURCE: OneAsset

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G.P.Martin--AT