Tokenized Assets Surge as Equities Lead Next Market Expansion

• Real-world asset AUM reached $34.18 billion, up 85.2% in 2026.
• Tokenized equities grew 390.4% YTD to $4.43 billion.
• Just 0.01% of the addressable traditional market is tokenized.
• Binance Research estimates only 12% of tokenized capital is active on-chain.

Tokenized real-world assets are growing quickly, but their footprint inside global finance remains microscopic.

RWA assets under management reached $34.18 billion as of September 15, an 85.2% increase since the start of 2026, according to a new report from Binance Research. Bonds and money-market funds account for $18.29 billion, while equities have emerged as the fastest-growing major category, expanding 390.4% this year to $4.43 billion.

The scale looks different against traditional markets. Binance Research estimates that the asset classes examined in the report represent more than $300 trillion in conventional financial assets, leaving overall tokenization penetration near 0.01%.

The next phase of growth therefore depends on two separate processes: bringing more assets on-chain and finding productive uses for those already tokenized.

Tokenized Equities Capture Less Than 0.003% of the Stock Market

Equities illustrate the gap particularly clearly.

Tokenized stocks now represent 13% of tracked RWA AUM, up from 4.9% at the beginning of the year. Yet their $4.43 billion footprint captures only 0.0029% of the $151.9 trillion global listed-equity market used as the report’s reference base.

Bonds and money-market funds are further ahead in absolute terms, with $18.29 billion tokenized and penetration of approximately 0.0171%.

Elsewhere, gold and commodities have expanded 46.6% this year, private credit 43.6% and real estate 17.9%. The divergence suggests tokenization is advancing fastest in markets where assets can already plug into trading, collateral or yield infrastructure rather than simply exist as blockchain representations.

AUM Doesn’t Show How Much Capital Is Actually Working

Binance Research attempts to measure that difference through two metrics: the Programmable Asset Ratio (PAR) and Capital Activation Rate (CAR).

PAR measures how much of a traditional asset class has been tokenized. CAR looks one step further, measuring how much of that tokenized value is subsequently deployed through on-chain financial applications.

The distinction separates asset issuance from asset utilization.

Private credit stands out with a 49.67% CAR, the highest among the categories examined. Equities remain much lower, but their activation rate has increased sharply from 1.95% to 7.54% during 2026.

That increase matters more than another headline AUM milestone. It indicates that some of the new equity supply is beginning to migrate into financial applications rather than remaining passively held.

Liquidity and Lending Dominate Tokenized Stock Activity

The deployment pattern is highly concentrated.

Liquidity pools account for 65.4% of equity DeFi TVL, with lending responsible for another 28.1%. Together, the two activities represent 93.5% of deployed tokenized-equity capital tracked in the report.

That concentration provides a cleaner way to judge the sector’s progress.

A rising tokenized-equity supply can reflect successful issuance and distribution. Rising CAR requires those assets to find a second use, whether as trading liquidity, collateral or lending inventory.

It also exposes a constraint. If most active capital remains concentrated in pools and lending protocols, the next stage of RWA development will depend partly on whether tokenized securities become useful across a broader set of financial applications.

$349 Billion of Tokenized Stocks Would Still Be a Small Market

The scale difference becomes even clearer in Binance Research’s 2030 modeling.

Its base scenario uses approximately $349 billion in tokenized equities, equivalent to only around 0.23% of the traditional equity market. A conservative scenario places the figure near $61 billion, while a higher scenario reaches $987 billion, or approximately 0.65% penetration. These figures are modeling scenarios from Binance Research rather than market forecasts.

More interestingly, the same asset base can produce very different levels of on-chain activity.

With $349 billion tokenized, a 10% CAR would translate into roughly $34.9 billion of activated capital. At a 20% CAR, that rises to approximately $69.9 billion without requiring additional stocks to be tokenized.

For protocols and exchanges, that creates two independent opportunities. One is competing for new issuance. The other is competing for the liquidity, lending and collateral activity generated after issuance.

Tokenized Stocks Are Connecting With Derivatives

There are early indications that the second opportunity is developing alongside exchange-based trading.

Binance Research found that 58.5% of early Binance bStocks users also interacted with perpetual futures or direct equities. The finding is specific to Binance’s user base and cannot be generalized across the entire RWA market, but it suggests tokenized shares are increasingly being used alongside other financial instruments rather than treated exclusively as standalone holdings.

That behavior also helps explain why exchanges are investing in unified collateral, derivatives and continuous trading around tokenized assets. A stock token that can only be held provides one function. An asset that can also supply liquidity, support borrowing or interact with a derivatives position has a much larger potential role in a trading portfolio.

The numbers to watch from here are therefore not just RWA issuance totals. Equity CAR, DeFi deployment and PAR can show whether the sector is progressing from putting traditional assets on blockchains to actually building liquid markets around them.