The missing asset — why data is RWA’s next frontier

Almost every major asset class — from real estate to commodities and securities — has found its place in the digital economy. But there’s one form of…

1 October 2025 Datafund 4 min read

Source: Datafund, Gemini

Almost every major asset class — from real estate to commodities and securities — has found its place in the digital economy. But there’s one form of value still left behind: the data that enables them all. It’s the next digital frontier to conquer and the ones that do will set the stage for the future.

September 2025 Blog Post #2 in Datafund’s Data tokenisation series.

The market for tokenised real-world assets (RWA) has exploded this year. In just six months, it has grown by 260%, crossing $23 billion by mid-2025. This value explosion didn’t go unnoticed. Boston Consulting Group already thinks it could hit $16 trillion by 2030.

But while we’ve been busy turning property, commodities, and bonds into digital assets, one frontier has remained untouched: data. The most valuable resource of the digital age still can’t be owned, valued, or traded like the assets it fuels. That’s finally starting to change.

The hidden economy of unaccounted value

Every hospital, research centre, and technology company generates data with measurable, repeatable economic value. Hospitals produce diagnostic datasets that could transform healthcare outcomes. Pharmaceutical companies invest hundreds of millions in clinical trials, producing insights that could benefit millions. Enterprises create streams of operational data that inform entire industries. Yet, none of this appears as an asset on their balance sheets.

Consider now the scale of the global data economy:

Despite the scale of this activity, the value chain remains fragmented — a patchwork of private deals, restricted APIs, and opaque licensing. Without ownership and valuation infrastructure, this will remain a shadow economy, invisible to capital markets and marked by missed opportunities.

Why data is a different beast

The RWA boom showed the world what happens when traditional assets are made liquid. More than a hundred issuers are already tokenising traditional assets, with institutions such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton validating the model with investment funds with billions in AUM. The infrastructure for cross-chain asset movement is also maturing rapidly, with protocols like Chainlink CCIP enabling secure interoperability.

But despite this impressive numbers, data is still not treated like a true asset. That’s because unlike property or gold it has some entirely unique properties. It can be replicated infinitely — a medical imaging dataset can power multiple AI models simultaneously while remaining intact. This replication paradox creates an entirely new kind of asset: one that can be used, reused, and monetised in parallel.

At the same time, data ownership doesn’t automatically imply access. Tokenising ownership is not the same as tokenising rights of use — just as owning a share in a pharmaceutical company doesn’t give you free medicine. This distinction is essential for enabling price discovery without compromising privacy or compliance.

And unlike static assets, data appreciates with time and use. As analytical methods and AI models improve, the same dataset can, for example, produce more accurate insights and therefore more value as time passes. A cancer detection dataset that may have achieved 85% accuracy in 2023 could now deliver 90%+ accuracy with advanced models, fundamentally changing its economic value.

Time to rethink data’s value

This shift reframes how we think about data ownership and its value growth in the digital economy. Data is no longer just an input — it’s an appreciating asset with its own market logic and unique qualities. And as such needs an accommodating infrastructure, just like all other appreciating asset classes.

Next up…

In our next blog, we’ll explore how this shift is already taking shape across industries — from hospitals and research labs to financial institutions and smart infrastructure — and how data tokenisation is starting to turn information into capital.

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The missing asset — why data is RWA’s next frontier was originally published in Datafund on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First published on Medium on 2025-10-01.