3.4 Where Most RWAs Actually Fall: "Other Crypto-Assets"
Why MiCA's residual category is reached only after a token has failed the tests for financial instruments, e-money tokens and asset-referenced tokens, why most tokenized real-world assets by value never reach it, which gold, steel, timber and farmland tokens have been notified under it, what a Title II offeror must do in place of authorization, and what holders give up when a real-asset token is drafted to fit.
The title of this section repeats a common assumption, and the evidence supports only part of it. By value, most tokenized real-world assets never reach MiCA's residual category. They are fund units, bonds and share-linked instruments, and they stay under MiFID II and the rest of the securities rulebook. What Title II does catch is a long tail of tokens linked to commodities and physical goods, and those tokens fit there because their white papers strip out the features that would make them something else: a promise of stable value, a claim against the issuer, a yield. Title II is where a real-world asset lands when it is drafted as a right to a thing rather than a claim to value or to a return, and the holder pays for that fit with a weaker claim.
Section 3.3 covered the e-money token, the one MiCA category built to work as cash, and its role as the settlement leg for tokenized assets. Section 3.2 covered asset-referenced tokens (ARTs), and Section 3.1 drew the map of what MiCA covers and excludes. This section takes the third category, which MiCA names only by what it is not: "crypto-assets other than asset-referenced tokens or e-money tokens", governed by Title II. It asks which tokenized real-world assets end up there, what Title II requires of the people who offer them, and what the holder gets in return. Statuses are as of 14 October 2026, and nothing here is a legal opinion on any token named.
The Residual Category Is Defined by What a Token Is Not
MiCA sorts crypto-assets into three types by one question: does the token try to hold a stable value by reference to something else? Recital 18 sets out the logic. E-money tokens reference a single official currency, asset-referenced tokens reference "another value or right, or combination thereof", and the third type "covers a wide variety of crypto-assets, including utility tokens"1. The third type has no positive definition of its own. It is whatever remains.
The joint guidelines of the three European Supervisory Authorities (ESAs) on classification, issued on 10 December 2024, turn that logic into an ordered test2. A supervisor or offeror first checks whether the token is a crypto-asset at all, then works through MiCA's exclusions in Article 2: excluded persons, unique non-fungible tokens, and the list in Article 2(4) that starts with financial instruments and deposits. Only then does the test ask whether the token is an e-money token, then whether it is an ART. The last step reads: "If the crypto-asset does not purport to maintain a stable value by referencing another value or right (and is therefore not an ART or EMT) it is to be classified as a crypto-asset pursuant to Title II of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114"2.
Think of it as the last door in a corridor. A token reaches it only after passing three others, and each earlier door leads to a stricter regime. That ordering is written into the notification itself. Under Article 8(4), a Title II white paper must be accompanied by an explanation of why the token should not be considered an excluded asset under Article 2(4), an e-money token or an asset-referenced token1. The ESAs' guidelines supply the template for that explanation2.
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) adds a rule for tokens that try to be several things at once. Its guidelines on when a crypto-asset is a financial instrument, set out in its final report of 17 December 2024, say that "If the hybrid token displays features of a financial instrument, such nature should take precedence in its classification", and that authorities should "prioritise assessing a crypto-asset's inherent attributes over the labels provided by issuers"3. A token called a utility token does not become one by being called so. Section 3.5 takes up that boundary with MiFID II in detail.
By Value, Most Tokenized Assets Leave Before They Reach It
The first exit, financial instruments, carries most of the market. Section 4.5 of the companion paper read rwa.xyz's table of distributed tokenized assets on 25 September 2026. US Treasury debt made up 38.6% of it, and yield-bearing debt as a whole, Treasuries plus non-US government debt and four credit classes, about 62%. Stocks added 8.1%. Commodities were $4.92 billion, 12.7%, and real estate $0.23 billion, 0.6%.
The large classes are instruments the EU already regulates. ECB staff place tokenized money market funds in the EU within the existing Money Market Fund Regulation (Section 6.4). Robinhood sells its stock tokens in the EU "under MiFID II as derivatives" (Section 5.6), and xStocks are tracker certificates with a prospectus (Section 4.3). The European Commission's consultation on the MiCA review, opened on 20 May 2026, states the result plainly: "some crypto-assets are regulated under MiCA, while tokenised financial instruments are not"4. Its first question asks whether that should change. The European Banking Authority (EBA) answered on 24 September 2026 that it "strongly recommends that tokenised financial instruments remain excluded from the scope of MiCA", because "tokenisation does not, per se, change the regulatory classification of an asset"5.
So the title's claim fails on value. Treasury funds, credit and stock tokens, about 70% of distributed value on that September reading, are fund units, debt instruments or derivatives in the EU, and they leave the corridor at the first door. The open question sits in the two smaller classes, commodities and real estate, together about 13% of value. Those are the tokens for which Title II is a live answer.
The Register Shows a Crypto-Native List With a Physical-Asset Tail
Every Title II white paper notified to a national authority ends up in ESMA's register. On 14 October 2026 that register was still the interim version, a set of CSV files that ESMA's MiCA page showed as last updated on 7 October 20266. The white-paper file held 1,038 records7. Of those, 276 name a crypto-asset service provider, mostly trading platforms that drew up white papers for tokens they admit, with Kraken's Irish entity the largest single source7. The issuer names that dominate the file are protocol foundations, development labs and meme-coin projects. Real-world assets are a small minority.
A search of the file for offerors and links associated with physical assets, by Protokol on 14 October 2026, finds the cases in Table 1. The search is not exhaustive, because the register names offerors rather than tokens, but each entry below was checked against its own white paper.
| Token | Home authority, white paper | What the holder gets | How the white paper places it in Title II |
|---|---|---|---|
| DGLD, Gold Token SA | Malta, notified 24 July 2026 | Co-ownership of allocated LBMA gold, one fine troy ounce per token, vaulted with MKS PAMP SA in Switzerland | States its function "is not to provide price stability"; delivery "is not a redemption of, or a claim against, the issuer"8 |
| LCX Gold (LCXG), with silver and platinum versions7 | Liechtenstein, notified 7 April 2025 | Access to retrieve a separate NFT, each representing one ounce of gold | Calls itself a utility token "NOT backed by gold"; the NFT, not the token, carries ownership9 |
| Steelcoin X, SC Steelcoin GmbH | Austria, dated 27 June 2025 | Right to acquire and collect hot-rolled steel coil, one token per metric ton | Utility token; "Cash redemption is not possible"; buyers "cannot rely on their Steelcoin X being backed by stored HRC"10 |
| TIMBER2026, TimberChain s.r.o. | Czech Republic, notified 10 October 2025 | "The possibility, (not the guarantee) to redeem timber" from cooperating suppliers | Tokens "are not directly backed 1:1 by timber"; processing-linked issuance "does not constitute interest, yield, or any form of financial income"11 |
| NatGold Token (NATG) | Ireland, notified 3 April 2026, for admission on Kraken | Representation of certified gold resources that stay in the ground | "No issuer commitment to price stability"; the token "does not grant any legally enforceable or contractual rights"12 |
| APFC, APF Digital Agrifund CR s.r.o. | Czech Republic, notified 30 July 2025 | A token whose sale proceeds fund mainly the purchase of agricultural land | No "rights to yields, interest or other regular income", and no management or voting rights13 |
The register also shows the limits of what it records. LCX's entries describe the "Admission to trading and offer" of its gold, silver and platinum tokens, and the same platform appears as the author of white papers for bitcoin, ether and other native coins it admits7. Real-asset tokens sit in the same file, under the same regime, as meme coins. Nothing in the register tells a reader which is which. That is by design: the register lists notifications, not classifications.
Staying Out of the ART Category Means Weakening the Claim
Every token in Table 1 references something real, and most of them could plausibly be read as trying to track its value. That is the ART definition. Article 3(1)(6) defines an asset-referenced token as one that "purports to maintain a stable value by referencing another value or right or a combination thereof"1. The EBA reported that, as at 1 September 2026, "0 asset-referenced tokens (ARTs)" had been authorized under Title III5. Commodity tokens are the clearest reason why.
The ART regime is heavy for a commodity token. An issuer must be authorized, which also approves its white paper, unless it is a credit institution whose white paper the authority approves directly (Articles 16, 17 and 21). It needs own funds of at least EUR 350,000 or 2% of the average reserve (Article 35). Holders have "a right of redemption at all times" against the issuer, in funds equal to the market value of the referenced assets or by delivery of those assets (Article 39). Any part of the reserve that is invested may go "only" into "highly liquid financial instruments with minimal market risk, credit risk and concentration risk" (Article 38)1. The European System of Central Banks (ESCB), in its September 2026 response to the MiCA review, drew the conclusion for gold and similar assets: because the reserve may not be invested in a referenced asset that is neither a currency nor a highly liquid financial instrument, "an ART cannot reference commodities and any other legitimate right or value that is not a financial instrument under EU or national law"14. The ESCB treats this as a design problem that "may have hindered the development of the ART market"14.
The EBA's account of the classification work explains what happens instead. "Commodities-linked tokens (e.g. so-called gold tokens) have proved particularly challenging to classify, often due to poor or incomplete information in the issuer's white paper regarding the description of the characteristics of the token", it wrote, which makes it hard to assess "whether the token represents a right to specific property (in the sense of an identified underlying asset/assets) or to a value"5. The EBA also reported that "arbitrage attempts to circumvent the relatively stricter requirements for financial instruments and EMTs, compared to ARTs, have been identified"5. Its concern there is tokens dressed as ARTs to avoid MiFID II or e-money rules, the reverse of the commodity case, but the method is the same: classification follows drafting.
The white papers in Table 1 answer the EBA's question in their own words, and each answer gives something up.
- Property instead of a claim. DGLD is the strongest version. Each token "represents a co-ownership right corresponding to one fine troy ounce of LBMA-certified gold", and the white paper says its rights "reflect an ownership-based model rather than a contractual repayment claim against the issuer"8. The holder owns gold rather than holding a promise, which is a real right, but one whose force depends on the property and custody law of the place the gold sits (Section 5.2 covers that dependency).
- A key instead of the asset. LCXG moves the gold into a separate NFT and calls the fungible token an access key: "LCXG tokens themselves are NOT backed by gold, do NOT grant ownership rights to physical gold, and do NOT confer a direct claim or redemption right to physical gold"9. Whether a one-ounce gold NFT is unique enough to sit outside MiCA is itself a question that ESMA's guidelines leave to a case-by-case assessment of indicators such as "intrinsic value and rarity"3.
- A delivery right without backing. Steelcoin X and TIMBER2026 promise goods, not money, and say plainly that the goods may not be there. The holder of Steelcoin X "does not own HRC (or a share in HRC) prior to the redemption"10.
- No rights at all. NatGold goes furthest: "holders do not acquire any legally enforceable claim against the issuer of the crypto-asset or any third party"12.
Read against the premise of the companion paper's Section 6, that a token's claim "is worth only what the law behind it will enforce", the pattern is uncomfortable. The features a white paper removes to keep a commodity token out of the ART regime, price stability, an issuer's redemption promise and yield, are the features that make a real-world asset token worth holding. None of this means the classifications in Table 1 are wrong; a notification is not a ruling, and each home authority can still challenge the classification at any time. It means the residual category rewards drafting that weakens the holder's position, and supervisors have said they are watching for it.
Real Estate Is Excluded Until Someone Slices It
Real estate takes a different route out of MiCA. Recital 10 says MiCA should not apply "to crypto-assets representing services or physical assets that are unique and non-fungible, such as product guarantees or real estate"1. The ESAs' classification test gives the example of "a non-fungible crypto-asset evidencing an exclusive property right in a specific tangible asset in real estate (such as a house or commercial property)"2. A token that is the deed to one building sits outside MiCA altogether, under whatever national property law recognizes it.
Tokenization rarely stops at one token per building, though, because the point is usually to let many people own a piece. Recital 11 closes that route: "The fractional parts of a unique and non-fungible crypto-asset should not be considered unique and non-fungible"1. ESMA's guidelines tell authorities not to treat fractionalized NFTs as unique automatically, and add that "If all fractional parts can be recombined to restore full ownership of an original NFT, this may indicate that the fractional parts do not independently qualify as unique and non-fungible under MiCA"3.
Once the building is sliced, the slices go back into the corridor, and the first door decides most cases. A fractional property token that pays out rental income or a share of a sale looks like a transferable security or a unit in an investment fund, and Guideline 9 says the financial-instrument features take precedence3. Only a slice with no income, no repayment and no promise of stable value would fall through to Title II, the same trade-off the commodity tokens make. The EBA noted that potential ART cases it had seen reference "commodities such as gold, financial instruments, real estate performance etc", and judged their likely use to be "investment"5. At 0.6% of distributed value on 25 September 2026, real estate is the smallest of the classes in Section 4.5's table, and MiCA gives it no comfortable home.
Notification, Not Approval, and Liability After the Fact
What Title II asks of an offeror is disclosure, not permission. Article 4(1) lets a legal person offer a Title II token to the public once it has drawn up, notified and published a white paper, drafted any marketing in line with it, and complied with Article 14's duties to act "honestly, fairly and professionally"1. The white paper must cover the offeror, the issuer, the project, the offer, the rights attached, the technology, the risks and the climate impact of the consensus mechanism (Article 6(1)). Its first page must say: "This crypto-asset white paper has not been approved by any competent authority in any Member State of the European Union"1. It must also warn that the token "may lose its value in part or in full" and is covered by neither investor compensation nor deposit guarantee schemes1.
The authority's role is fixed by Article 8(3): "Competent authorities shall not require prior approval of crypto-asset white papers, nor of any marketing communications relating thereto, before their respective publication"1. The offeror notifies the home authority at least 20 working days before publication, with the classification explanation described above, and ESMA puts the paper in the register by the start of the offer1. Once published, the white paper works as a passport: the token may be offered "throughout the Union" and admitted to any EU trading platform for crypto-assets (Article 11)1. Since 23 December 2025, Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2984 has required the paper to be "drawn up in XHTML format marking the fields set out in the Annex using Inline XBRL 1.1 specifications", so that supervisors and data users can read it by machine15. Several white papers in Table 1 were drafted on that template810.
The protections sit after the fact. Article 15 makes the offeror and the members of its management body liable to holders for losses caused by white-paper information that is "not complete, fair or clear" or is misleading, and voids any contractual exclusion of that liability. The holder carries the burden of proving the infringement and that reliance on the information had an impact on the decision to purchase, sell or exchange1. Retail buyers who purchase from the offeror, or from a service provider placing the token on its behalf, get 14 calendar days to withdraw (Article 13), but not once the token is admitted to trading1. Supervisors act by warning and enforcement rather than review. On 6 May 2026 Estonia's Finantsinspektsioon warned the public that the white paper of "TeamPL Token" offered by BB Trade Estonia OÜ "is unavailable on the company's official website", in breach of the Article 9 duty to keep it available "for as long as the crypto-assets are held by the public"16. ESMA's register record for that offeror links to the warning7.
The exemptions matter for institutional real-asset tokens. Article 4(2) waives the white paper for offers to fewer than 150 persons per member state, for offers of no more than EUR 1,000,000 over 12 months, and for offers "addressed solely to qualified investors where the crypto-asset can only be held by such qualified investors"1. A permissioned token with a whitelist of professional holders can meet that last condition. The exemptions fall away, under Article 4(4), as soon as the offeror announces an intention to seek admission to trading1. The utility-token exemption in Article 4(3) does not help vault-based tokens either. Recital 26 says the exemptions "should not include crypto-assets representing stored goods that are not intended to be collected by the purchaser following the purchase"1.
Trading platforms can carry the burden instead. Article 5 requires the operator of a platform to meet the white-paper obligations when it admits a token on its own initiative, and lets it agree in writing to take them over from the person seeking admission. Article 15(3) then holds that person responsible too when it gives the operator information that is incomplete, unclear or misleading1. That is how NatGold, a Delaware company, reached the register: it notified a white paper as the person seeking admission to trading on Kraken12. For tokens admitted before 30 December 2024, Article 143(2) gives platform operators until 31 December 2027 to make sure a compliant white paper exists1.
The Review Could Move the Line
The residual category is under review. Article 140(2)(c) requires the Commission's report, due by 30 June 2027, to include "an assessment of the necessity of the introduction of an approval mechanism for crypto-asset white papers for crypto-assets other than asset-referenced tokens and e-money tokens"1. The Commission's consultation asked respondents to rate the adequacy of the "Ex ante notification model without prior regulatory approval (Article 8)" and to say which categories remain hardest to classify, listing "hybrid tokens, wrapped assets, tokenised fund interests, tokenised money-market instruments, governance tokens, synthetic exposures, or assets marketed as NFTs but issued in series"4. Section 6.3 of the companion paper dates the consultation and the report.
Two public authorities have already proposed changes that would move commodity tokens. The EBA raised the question "whether, in fact, ART is essentially a redundant category and should be assimilated into the concept of 'financial instrument'"5. The ESCB wrote that where ARTs reference financial instruments or commodities, "their regulatory treatment may sit more naturally within the financial instruments framework", and, as an alternative inside MiCA, that it "could also be considered to allow ART issuers to redeem solely in kind if the token references values or rights other than currencies"14. Either change would alter the calculation that keeps a gold or steel token in Title II today. If ARTs folded into financial instruments, a commodity token that references value would face securities law. If in-kind redemption and better-matched reserves made the ART route workable, a commodity token could promise stable value without the drafting in Table 1. Neither proposal is law.
For a project deciding today, the practical reading is narrower than the outline title suggests. Title II is the right home for a real-asset token only when the token honestly gives no claim to a return, no promise of stable value and no right that looks like a security. That describes some commodity and goods-delivery tokens, and few of the yield-bearing products that make up most of the market. Section 3.5 takes the first door, the MiFID II boundary, where most tokenized real-world assets by value actually go; Section 3.6 covers the license a platform needs to offer or trade any of them; and Section 3.8 pulls the EU path together.
- MiCA's Title II category has no positive definition. The ESAs' standardized test reaches it only after a token is found not to be excluded, not an e-money token and not an ART, and ESMA's guidelines say financial-instrument features take precedence over issuer labels such as "utility".
- By value, most tokenized real-world assets do not fall under "other crypto-assets". On rwa.xyz's 25 September 2026 table, yield-bearing debt was about 62% and stocks 8.1% of distributed value, instruments the EU treats under MiFID II and fund rules, while commodities and real estate together were about 13%.
- ESMA's interim register held 1,038 Title II white-paper records as last updated on 7 October 2026, dominated by native crypto tokens, with a small tail of real-asset tokens: DGLD and LCX gold, Steelcoin X steel, TIMBER2026 timber, NatGold in-ground gold and a Czech farmland-funding token.
- No ART had been authorized as of 1 September 2026, and the ESCB reads MiCA's reserve rules as meaning an ART "cannot reference commodities". The commodity tokens notified under Title II avoid the ART regime by disclaiming price stability, issuer redemption or yield, and NatGold's white paper says it grants no "legally enforceable or contractual rights".
- Title II relies on notification, a machine-readable white paper, civil liability and ex post warnings rather than approval. The Commission must assess by 30 June 2027 whether white papers need approval, and the EBA and ESCB have proposed changes to the ART category that would move commodity tokens.