How This Company is Bringing the Trillion Dollar Oil Market On-Chain
Speakers
Will Harris
— Bloomberg Intelligence
Jennifer Sanasie
— Senior Anchor & Executive Producer, CoinDesk
Summary
This episode of Brand New Rails features Wil Harris, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Energy Substantiation, discussing the launch of WTIC, a token backed one-to-one by WTI crude oil on Ethereum. Harris argues oil is having a moment and that energy will become a mainstream investment theme alongside equities and crypto. He also says the real innovation in tokenization is bringing hard-to-custody assets on-chain.
- Energy Substantiation launched WTIC, a token backed 1:1 by WTI crude oil on Ethereum.
- WTIC tokenizes oil in inventory or transit with regulated US suppliers.
- Harris says oil is gaining mainstream attention due to geopolitics and daily news coverage.
- He expects oil, and possibly natural gas, to become core investment allocations.
- Harris argues hard-to-custody RWA tokenization is the key innovation.
- The host notes futures and ETFs have risks and costs that physical crude avoids.
Ideas
WTIC gives on-chain spot WTI oil exposure.
WTIC is a token backed one-to-one by real barrels of WTI crude oil and live on Ethereum. It tokenizes oil already in inventory or in transit with major regulated US suppliers, buying the rights to the oil and minting against it. This solves the custody problem that has kept retail out of physical crude, lets suppliers monetize idle inventory, and gives investors actual spot exposure to oil on-chain down to a penny. Harris frames this as part of oil's moment and the broader hard-to-custody RWA opportunity.
Oil and natural gas become mainstream investments.
Harris says energy will be the currency of the future. The Iranian war earlier this year caught everyone's attention and oil is in the news daily. He thinks investors who are interested in equities, crypto, and Bitcoin will increasingly include oil, and possibly natural gas in the future, as one of the main things they think about when investing.
Oil and natural gas become mainstream investments.
Harris says energy will be the currency of the future. The Iranian war earlier this year caught everyone's attention and oil is in the news daily. He thinks investors who are interested in equities, crypto, and Bitcoin will increasingly include oil, and possibly natural gas in the future, as one of the main things they think about when investing.
Hard-to-custody tokenized RWAs are the real innovation.
Harris says most RWA tokenization has focused on assets that are easy to custody, such as stocks, bonds, and gold. The real innovation is making hard-to-custody and hard-to-access assets available, because investors lack alternatives and individuals cannot replicate such exposure today. Tokenization can unlock these markets, making them game changers for investors.
