Author: CoinGecko Translator: Starbase Accelerator
On June 30, 2026, CoinGecko released the "TradFi on Crypto Exchanges Report 2026," an industry data report focusing on the current status of on-chain trading of traditional financial assets on crypto exchanges. It covers RWA spot and TradFi perpetual contract data from 13 major centralized and decentralized exchanges from January 2025 to May 2026.
The report unfolds from the following dimensions:
Exchange RWA Listing Overview: Number of Spot and TradFi Perpetual Contracts Listed, Asset Distribution, and Platform Strategy Differences
RWA Spot Trading Breakdown: Monthly Trading Volume Changes by Three Asset Classes: Commodities, Stocks, and ETFs
Product Mechanism Comparison: Structural Differences Between Crypto-Native Perpetual, TradFi Perpetual, and Traditional Futures in Dimensions such as Settlement, Leverage, and Trading Hours
In-Depth Analysis of the Perpetual Market: Trading Volume and Open Interest of RWA and TradFi Perpetual Contracts, Presented by Asset Class and Exchange
Equity Sub-sectors: Trading Data, Open Interest Structure, and SpaceX of Tokenized Equity Perpetual and Pre-IPO Perpetual Contracts
Price Signals Before and After Listing
Market Share Perspective: Changes in Trading Volume and Open Interest Share of TradeFi Perpetual Tokens in the Overall Exchange Perpetual Token Market
RWA Spot Trading: From a Marginal Category to an Exchange Standard
RWA spot trading has gone from being an "experiment" to a standard business line for exchanges.
In January 2025, the total monthly trading volume of tokenized RWA spot tokens in the entire market was only $850 million; by January 2026, this figure had soared to $41.26 billion, a 48-fold year-on-year increase.
Even though trading volume fell back to $19.07 billion in May, the cumulative trading volume for the first five months of 2026 ($153.71 billion) is already nearly 50% higher than the total for 2025 ($102.71 billion). This growth is not driven by a single asset. Commodities (mainly gold) accounted for more than half of the increase, with a cumulative trading volume of $116.26 billion so far in 2026, averaging $23.25 billion per month, more than three times the monthly average of $7.06 billion in 2025. Spot trading of tokenized stocks also increased from $2.53 billion in January 2025 to $7.51 billion in May 2026, more than doubling the monthly average. ETFs saw even more dramatic growth, increasing from a monthly average of $0.21 billion in 2025 to a monthly average of $0.86 billion so far in 2026, a fourfold increase. The divergence at the exchange level is quite interesting. MEXC, Gate, and WEEX adopted a "wide net" approach, listing 358, 224, and 192 RWA spot and perpetual products respectively. Kraken, through its acquisition of Backed Finance, surged to second place in the number of spot RWA listings (105), but only offered 16 perpetual contracts, a clearly conservative strategy. Binance, OKX, and Coinbase, the leading exchanges, took a completely opposite approach—listing only 1-2 spot RWAs, but extensively deploying perpetual contracts. This suggests a consensus: RWA liquidity primarily resides in derivatives, while spot trading is more of a "presence" strategy. TradeFi Perpetual Contracts: Growth Rate More Aggressive Than Spot Market, But Still a Single-Digit Share of the Overall Market. If spot trading represents a "quantitative change," perpetual contracts represent a "qualitative change." At the beginning of 2025, the daily open interest of TradeFi perpetual contracts was less than $10 million; by the end of May 2026, this figure had risen to $6.24 billion. Trading volume is even more staggering: in 2025, TradeFi perpetual contract trading volume reached $104.21 billion, and in the first five months of 2026, it had already exceeded $1.32 trillion, more than 12 times that of the entire previous year. In terms of asset structure, commodity perpetual contracts completely dominate. In 2025, the monthly average was $5.68 billion, and from 2026 to the present, it has reached a monthly average of $223.17 billion—note that this level far exceeds that of the spot market. Equity perpetual contracts have increased from a monthly average of $4.34 billion to $26.84 billion, ETF perpetual contracts from $1.5 billion to $8.74 billion, and forex perpetual contracts from $0.7 billion to $4.1 billion. However, a stark reality is that even with such astonishing growth, TradeFi perpetual contracts still represent a very small percentage of the overall exchange perpetual market. Its trading volume share rose from less than 1% in 2025 to a peak of 17.22% in March 2026, before falling back to 7.48% in May; its open interest share climbed from 0.81% to 6.14%. This means that TradeFi perpetual contracts are currently still an "incremental toy for crypto-native traders," rather than a result of a large-scale migration of traditional funds. The exchange landscape is also rapidly reshuffling. In 2025, Bybit, Bitget, and OKX briefly led the pack, but since 2026, Binance (35.9% market share), MEXC (22.8%), and Hyperliquid (19.8%) have formed the new top three. Hyperliquid is particularly noteworthy: its TradFi perpetual trading volume market share is only 6%, but its open interest market share is as high as 46.4%, with a peak daily open interest of $2.89 billion. This indicates that Hyperliquid's users are more inclined towards "long-term holding" or "arbitrage strategies" rather than short-term speculation. Tokenized Stock Perpetual: The True Position After 40x Growth Tokenized stock perpetual is the most "narrative-driven" sub-sector in the report, but the data needs to be analyzed in detail. When it launched in July 2025, the monthly trading volume was only $831 million; by May 2026, this figure had surged to $34 billion, a 40-fold increase. The most active stocks were Nvidia, Tesla, and AI-related Micron—the latter's trading volume jumped 17-fold from $736 million in April to $13.16 billion in May 2026, clearly a pulse driven by the AI narrative. The report sets a crucial point: even with a 40-fold increase, the trading volume of tokenized perpetual stocks is still less than 1% of the total trading volume of the traditional stock market. This is not modesty, but a reminder—stock trading on crypto exchanges is still a long way from "replacing" or "parallel" to the traditional stock market. At the exchange level, Bitget briefly dominated this category in November 2025, but Binance overtook it in May 2026 with a 43.65% share of trading volume, while Hyperliquid held 58.8% of the open interest (US$655 million). This further confirms Hyperliquid's positioning as a "positioning platform." The ratio of open interest to trading volume is also interesting. The total trading volume of tokenized perpetual stocks is 30 times the total open interest, meaning the average holding period is very short, with users betting on intraday fluctuations rather than long-term holding. This is completely different from the behavior patterns of traditional stock markets and is closer to the operating habits of native crypto traders. Pre-IPO Sustainability: SpaceX's IPO is the Best Stress Test
Pre-IPO sustainability is the freshest data in this report and also the most "event-driven" sector.
From November 2025 to May 2026, Pre-IPO sustainability grew from almost zero to $701 million in monthly transactions. SpaceX (SPCX) stood out, accounting for 43.55% of the total transactions in May. Together with OpenAI and Anthropic, the three companies accounted for 95.62%. This concentration indicates that Pre-IPO sustainability is currently entirely supported by "star unlisted companies," and the diversity of categories is far from sufficient.
Pre-IPO sustainability is currently entirely supported by "star unlisted companies," and the variety of categories is still far from sufficient.
SpaceX's Nasdaq listing (June 12, 2026) served as the best stress test for pre-IPO perpetual contracts. In the week leading up to the listing, SPCX perpetual contracts varied significantly across exchanges: around $170 on Binance and WEEX, and around $155 on Coinbase, Gate, and OKX. As IPO information was gradually released, prices converged to the $160-$165 range by June 10th. Two days before the listing, prices on all exchanges simultaneously broke through $180. Ultimately, SPCX opened at $150, while the average closing price of the perpetual contracts was $157, a premium of 4.67%. This case illustrates two points: First, pre-IPO perpetual bonds do indeed function as a "price discovery" mechanism, and prices converge as the listing date approaches. Second, different exchanges have varying pricing efficiencies; Binance and WEEX priced their pre-IPO products too high, while Coinbase and OKX priced them too low. This divergence itself presents arbitrage opportunities, but it is also a source of risk. Binance's rise in the pre-IPO market is noteworthy—it only launched its pre-IPO products on May 21st, but by the end of May, it had topped the list with a 43.45% share of trading volume. OKX and WEEX followed closely behind, while Hyperliquid, which had monopolized this category since November 2025, has now been overtaken by centralized exchanges (CEXs). Product Mechanism Comparison: TradFi Persistence is Not Simply Copying Crypto-Native Persistence. The product comparison table on page 5 of the report is worth reading carefully. TradFi perpetual contracts operate on crypto exchanges in several ways, differing significantly from native crypto perpetual contracts and traditional futures contracts: Trading Hours: 24/7 trading, even when the underlying traditional market is closed – this is the biggest differentiating factor. Leverage: Regulated platforms typically offer 20-25x leverage, offshore platforms can offer higher, but generally lower than the 100x+ leverage of native crypto perpetual contracts. Price Anchoring: Traditional markets anchor to the spot price at opening and rely on the exchange's own order book for pricing when the market closes, leading to "basis drift" and creating delta-neutral carry trade space. Clearing Mechanism: Inherits the exchange's own clearing engine, without the CCP (Central Counterparty) and SPAN of traditional futures. Margin System
This structure means that TradeFi perpetual contracts on crypto exchanges are more like a hybrid product of "crypto shell + TradeFi core". Its user base may not be traditional stock investors, but rather crypto traders already familiar with perpetual contract mechanisms who are looking for new targets.
Summary
The core conclusion of this report is that the trading volume of TradeFi assets on crypto exchanges has experienced exponential growth over the past 17 months, but it is still in its early stages relative to the overall crypto trading market.
RWA spot trading is dominated by commodities, while stocks and ETFs are growing rapidly but are small in size.
TradFi perpetual contracts are the fastest growing segment, with both trading volume and open interest achieving orders-of-magnitude leaps, but their share of the overall exchange perpetual market is still less than 10%.
TradFi perpetual contracts are the fastest growing segment, with both trading volume and open interest achieving orders-of-magnitude leaps, but their share of the overall exchange perpetual market is still less than 10%.
The competitive landscape of stock exchanges is clearly differentiated. Some platforms establish their presence through broad coverage, while others retain users through deep derivatives trading. Hyperliquid's unusually high proportion of open interest reflects a significant difference in its user structure compared to other platforms. Tokenized perpetual stocks and pre-IPO perpetual stocks are emerging sub-sectors. The former is driven by AI narrative impulses, while the latter heavily relies on a few star companies. SpaceX's IPO provided the first complete validation case for the price discovery function of pre-IPO perpetual stocks. For projects investing in the RWA (Real-Time Exploitation) sector, these figures are important references for judging market maturity, competitor strategies, and user behavior.
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