According to PANews, Wall Street's top talent is fully committed to tokenizing real-world assets, but they face a crossroads: proceed cautiously or venture into the uncharted territory of decentralized finance (DeFi). The financial world is undergoing a blockchain transformation, with Wall Street leading the way in digitizing traditional assets. However, as banks and asset management companies delve deeper into this new field, they face a tough choice: stick to the safe, controlled environment they know or risk entering the unknown wilderness of DeFi.

For those unfamiliar, DeFi operates like autonomous financial services in the crypto world. It consists of blockchain-based projects offering lending, trading, and other services without any central authority. While it sounds appealing, it also presents a regulatory minefield that makes traditional finance professionals uneasy. Steven Hu, a digital asset expert at Standard Chartered Bank, candidly states that fully decentralized tokenization is neither