Tokenized real-world assets hit $34.18 billion, up 85% this year

Tokenized real-world assets are no longer just about moving traditional instruments onchain — they’re starting to get put to work. That’s the core message from a new report by Binance Research, the research arm of the Binance exchange, titled “The RWA Activation Era.” The study argues that the tokenization story is entering a second phase, one where the real question isn’t how much value gets wrapped into a token, but what happens to that value once it’s there.

Key takeaways

• Total assets under management in the RWA market hit $34.18 billion as of September 15, 2026, up 85.2% year to date, according to Binance Research.
• Bonds and money market funds remain the largest category at $18.29 billion, while equities surged 390.4% year to date.
• Tokenized assets still represent only about 0.01% of their underlying traditional markets, showing how early-stage the sector remains.
• Binance Research introduced two new metrics — Programmable Asset Ratio (PAR) and Capital Activation Rate (CAR) — to measure how tokenized assets are actually being used.
• Private credit posted the highest CAR at 49.67%, while tokenized equities’ CAR climbed from 1.95% to 7.54% since the start of 2026.

Binance Research unveils The RWA Activation Era report

Binance Research’s new report reframes what growth actually means in the tokenized real-world assets space. Instead of tracking issuance alone, the study zooms in on how tokens behave once they exist — whether they end up sitting idle in wallets or get pulled into trading, lending, liquidity pools and collateral markets.

The numbers behind that shift are sizable. Total assets under management across the RWA market reached $34.18 billion as of September 15, 2026, a jump of 85.2% since the beginning of the year. That pace of growth suggests tokenization has moved well past the experimental stage, even if, as the report itself points out, the market is still tiny relative to the traditional finance it mirrors.

Overview of market size and growth metrics

Binance Research frames this growth as evidence that tokenized real-world assets are shifting from a niche crypto experiment into something closer to mainstream financial infrastructure. The scale is still modest in absolute terms, but the trajectory is what stands out — nearly doubling in under nine months signals accelerating institutional and retail interest in bringing traditional instruments onchain.

Market composition and growth dynamics

Bonds and money market funds continue to dominate the RWA landscape, holding the largest share of assets under management at $18.29 billion. That category alone accounts for more than half of the market’s total value, reflecting steady demand for tokenized yield-bearing instruments that mimic traditional cash-management tools.

Equities, however, are where the momentum is most visible. The category grew 390.4% year to date, making it the fastest-expanding segment in the report. Together, bonds, money market funds and equities accounted for more than three-quarters of the market’s overall growth this year.

Other emerging assets: gold, commodities, private credit, and real estate

Growth isn’t confined to financial paper. Binance Research also flags rising activity in gold, commodities, private credit and real estate — a sign, the report argues, that tokenization is broadening beyond crypto-native collateral into a wider slice of traditional markets. This diversification matters because it suggests the appeal of tokenized real-world assets is spreading across asset classes rather than staying concentrated in a handful of instruments.

Early stage of tokenization and new performance metrics

Despite the headline growth, tokenized assets still make up only around 0.01% of the traditional markets they represent, according to Binance Research. That gap underscores just how much room remains before onchain instruments meaningfully rival their offchain counterparts.

Equities offer the clearest illustration. Onchain volume for tokenized stocks reached $4.43 billion, but that figure represents just 0.0029% of the $151.9 trillion public equities market. In other words, even the fastest-growing category in tokenized real-world assets barely registers against the scale of traditional finance.

Introducing Programmable Asset Ratio and Capital Activation Rate

To capture this dynamic more precisely, Binance Research introduced two new metrics. The Programmable Asset Ratio (PAR) measures how much of a given underlying market is already represented as a programmable onchain asset. The Capital Activation Rate (CAR), meanwhile, tracks what share of that tokenized base is actually deployed in onchain financial applications — liquidity pools, lending protocols and collateral markets among them.

Across the entire tokenized real-world assets market, overall PAR sits at roughly 0.01%, while overall CAR comes in around 12%. That means for every $100 worth of tracked tokenized assets, roughly $12 is already being put to active use in onchain finance. This distinction matters: a low PAR shows the market is still tiny relative to traditional finance, while a rising CAR shows that whatever value does get tokenized is increasingly being used rather than left dormant.

Capital activation across asset classes

The aggregate CAR figure hides sharp differences between asset categories, and that’s arguably the most revealing part of the report. Private credit leads the pack with a CAR of 49.67%, meaning nearly half of all tokenized private credit is actively deployed in onchain financial activity.

Equities, while starting from a much lower base, posted one of the steepest gains. Equity CAR climbed from 1.95% to 7.54% since the start of 2026 — a fourfold increase that signals growing appetite for using tokenized stocks beyond simple holding.

DeFi applications dominate tokenized equity usage

Within DeFi specifically, tokenized equities’ usage skews heavily toward liquidity provision. Liquidity pools account for 65.4% of tokenized equities’ total value locked in DeFi, with another 28.1% tied up in lending. Combined, those two applications make up 93.5% of all deployed value, showing that when tokenized stocks do get activated, they’re overwhelmingly used for market-making and credit rather than more exotic financial strategies.

Forecasts and future implications for tokenized equities

Binance Research’s forward-looking scenarios, drawn from its earlier “Tokenization’s Trillion-Dollar Runway” report, sketch out a wide range of possible outcomes for tokenized equities by 2030. Under conservative, base and bull-case scenarios, the report projects roughly $61 billion, $349 billion and $987 billion in tokenized equities, respectively. Measured against the current $4.43 billion onchain balance, those figures would translate into a PAR of roughly 0.04%, 0.23% and 0.65% by 2030.

Higher AUM should, in general, push PAR higher too. But CAR doesn’t necessarily follow the same path — it depends on whether liquidity, lending and collateral applications scale in step with issuance, or lag behind it. That’s the strategic tension Binance Research highlights: growth in tokenized real-world assets could come from bringing more capital onchain, from making the capital already there more usable, or from both happening at once.

Binance Research suggests the strongest signal for the industry going forward wouldn’t just be a bigger AUM number, but PAR and CAR rising together. That combination would indicate tokenization is genuinely shifting from a one-time issuance event into a repeatable, ongoing financial function — with assets moving through onchain markets rather than simply sitting on a blockchain as a digital record.

FAQ
What is the main focus of the Binance Research report titled The RWA Activation Era?

The report focuses on the next phase of the tokenized real-world assets market, emphasizing the active financial use of tokenized assets after issuance.

How large is the tokenized real-world asset market as of September 2026?

Total assets under management in the RWA market reached $34.18 billion, growing 85.2% year to date.

What are the new metrics introduced by Binance Research to assess the tokenized asset market?

Programmable Asset Ratio (PAR) measures the share of the underlying market represented onchain, and Capital Activation Rate (CAR) measures the share of tokenized assets actively used in onchain financial applications.

Which asset class has the highest Capital Activation Rate and what does it signify?

Private credit has the highest CAR at 49.67%, indicating almost half of its tokenized assets are actively used in onchain financial activities.

Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.