[Digital Today Kyung-min Hong (홍경민), intern reporter] Even as the cryptocurrency market remains broadly sluggish, the real-world asset (RWA) market is showing rapid growth, helped by financial institutions’ participation and asset diversification.
On June 8, blockchain media outlet Cointelegraph reported that RWA is emerging as one of the industry’s few growth drivers despite macroeconomic headwinds and policy uncertainty in the cryptocurrency market. As traditional finance accelerates adoption of blockchain technology, the range of investable assets is rapidly expanding from bonds and stocks to real estate and precious metals.
This structural shift is also reflected in specific indicators. According to Binance Research’s latest monthly market insights report, the overall RWA market surged 589 percent from early 2025 to June 2026, showing steep growth, while growth rates differed markedly by asset class. Traditional finance-based assets such as bonds and money market funds grew 83 percent over the same period, adding about $6.5 billion in new value to the market. That served as a stable pillar driving the market’s overall expansion.
The area that posted the highest growth rate and led the structural change was tokenised equities. That asset class jumped 422 percent over the same period, becoming the fastest-growing area within the RWA market. Platforms such as Ondo Global Markets were at the centre of that growth, surpassing $1 billion in total value locked just eight months after launch and driving market expansion.
The tokenised equity boom expanded beyond listed stocks within regulated markets into the realm of private, unlisted companies. A representative case is tokenised shares of SpaceX launched by Kraken through its xStocks platform. xStocks surpassed $25 billion in cumulative trading volume about eight months after launch, rapidly expanding its influence in the market. As a result, investor interest in the sector has continued without fading, despite reports of a negative development that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission delayed plans to allow innovation exemptions for tokenised equities.
As technology-driven equity tokenisation becomes more active, the tokenised precious metals market also continued to grow in tandem, supported by demand for safe-haven assets to respond to macroeconomic instability. Tokenised precious metals attracted funds concentrated in January and February this year, when geopolitical uncertainty intensified. Inflows totalled $1.5 billion in that period alone, posting a 39 percent growth rate. The tokenised gold market at one point exceeded $6 billion, but has since edged down as global gold prices corrected.
The tokenisation trend centred on financial assets and commodities is now spreading to real estate, a traditional physical asset, triggering the adoption of blockchain-based settlement and management systems. Apex Group has started providing fund services using Goldman Sachs’ digital asset platform. It is a representative example showing that major financial firms are actively adopting blockchain technology at the infrastructure level to improve efficiency and reliability in asset management.
The shift is moving beyond the launch of investment products and is increasingly leading to innovation in core financial infrastructure, which can be seen as the foundation of the financial system. In particular, commercial banks are pushing in earnest to build tokenised deposit networks to modernise payment systems without ceding leadership to fast-growing stablecoins.
The Wall Street Journal reported that The Clearing House, a payment operator jointly formed by JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, BNY and Wells Fargo, plans to unveil a tokenised deposit network next year. Binance Research assessed that, as infrastructure adoption in mainstream finance accelerates, 2026 will be a pivotal turning point in which RWA tokenisation matures from a narrative centred on U.S. Treasuries into a diversified yield ecosystem.
Leave a comment