Tokenization Wave: The boundaries of assets are being reshaped. "Greatness is like a void; its use is not exhausted; great abundance is like a flood; its use is inexhaustible." No matter what you call it: ETF, Delta-1 swap, stablecoin, RWA asset tokenization... Ultimately, they are fundamentally the same thing: a tool that anchors underlying financial assets and achieves a 1:1 synthetic exposure, aimed at allowing more people to access and trade these assets more conveniently and freely. An ETF (Exchange-Traded Fund) is essentially a fund product that tracks a certain category of assets or indices, which can be traded on an exchange, allowing investors to efficiently participate in that asset class without having to manage a basket of underlying assets personally. Although stablecoins sound trendy, their logic is quite similar: they anchor to fiat prices, providing a price-stable, tradable digital tool on-chain, allowing users to hold equivalent USD or other fiat currencies in the blockchain world. Delta-1 swap contracts are tools commonly used by institutional investors. In regions where there are quotas or tax controls on foreign capital, investors can obtain a 1:1 financial exposure to the price (i.e., delta equals 1) by signing Delta-1 contracts with brokers, thus circumventing regulatory restrictions or compliance barriers. Before diving deeper, we need to return to two basic premises of the crypto industry: First, cryptocurrencies are a new alternative investment asset class; second, blockchain is a new distributed ledger technology. These two are often confused, but the following discussion needs to differentiate them. The core goals of such synthetic asset products are only two: to lower the threshold and to achieve diversified allocation. Taking Bitcoin ETF as an example. Why did it attract significant market attention 18 months ago? Because it perfectly meets these two goals. First, for traditional investors who do not understand buying coins, wallets, or signing operations, Bitcoin ETF allows them to easily gain BTC exposure using a familiar brokerage system. Secondly, those who have never ventured into crypto assets can finally allocate 1%, 5%, or even 10% of their funds. When countless funds and accounts make small percentage allocations, the accumulated inflow of funds can be substantial. Therefore, the launch of Bitcoin (and Ethereum, Solana, etc.) ETFs is a victory for cryptocurrencies as an "asset class," but it does not provide direct benefits for blockchain as a "technical solution." On the other hand, the asset tokenization of xStocks is quite the opposite. First, if you already hold cryptocurrencies, having to convert funds into fiat, transfer them to a brokerage account, and wait for the market to open before investing in traditional assets is cumbersome and inefficient. But now, you can directly use your existing crypto assets on the Gate platform to participate in traditional asset trading with a single click, providing an almost frictionless experience. Secondly, the logic of diversified allocation still holds. The entire cryptocurrency market is essentially a high-risk asset field; if one does not want to bear excessively high risks, they can only keep funds in stablecoins, which are relatively safe but also yield limited returns. The entire industry actually lacks options for medium-risk assets, while asset tokenization perfectly fills this gap, providing a new possibility for asset distribution. Therefore, tokenization is more like a victory for blockchain technology rather than a victory for cryptocurrencies themselves. Think about it, we have first achieved cross-market rotation within the crypto asset system: no need to withdraw funds, no need to switch to the traditional financial system, users can trade these tokenized assets 24/7; all trading pairs support USDT, no need to convert to the corresponding fiat currency, and support efficient cross-chain settlement, allowing for easy transfers. This mechanism also avoids exchange rate fluctuations and bridging costs. More importantly, we have successfully implemented a cross-collateralization mechanism: users can use existing crypto assets as collateral to obtain long and short exposure to traditional equity assets. This is a problem that banks and brokers have been trying to solve for years but have not yet resolved, and we have already achieved it. Synthetic assets are essentially a proxy tool. For example, if you are optimistic about future oil price increases, you naturally wouldn't buy a barrel of crude oil to store at home. Since the day humanity moved away from barter, this financial concept of "representing value" has begun to evolve and continues to extend to this day. Tokenization is just the latest stage, and the asset classes that can be anchored behind it will be more diverse in the future. On the other hand, while the theory of asset allocation is not an ancient subject, its development has exceeded seventy years. Modern Portfolio Theory has been widely accepted since 1952 and is applicable to all asset types. Now that there are single-coin ETFs on the market, it is only a matter of time before there are ETFs that represent a basket of crypto assets or crypto index ETFs. Conversely, the tokenization of traditional assets has only just begun, and in the future, tokenized products that can anchor a basket of stocks and track indices like MSCI will also become mainstream investment tools. So all of this is just the beginning.