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Pantera Capital's September 2026 survey found a sharp mismatch between the value of tokenised real-world assets (RWAs) and their trading activity. Permissioned products made up 59% of the market's capitalisation but generated just 0.2% of spot volume. The survey covered 671 assets worth $331.8 billion.
Open-access products showed the reverse pattern: they represented 41% of market capitalisation and produced 99.8% of spot trading. For firms building around these assets, the split matters. A token's value or holder count does not establish that it can be traded readily.
BlackRock's BUIDL illustrates the distinction. It held $2.77 billion across 10 chains, with 106 investors, yet registered 191 transfers in a month.
Franklin Templeton's BENJI had 562 holders and $0 in monthly transfer volume. By comparison, stablecoins turn over roughly 21 times their float each month; BUIDL's rate was 0.12 times, a 180-fold gap.
Ownership growth outpaces spot trading
Holder totals have risen quickly, but the distribution of trading remains narrow. BNB Chain counted 2,032,387 RWA holder addresses in early October 2026, up 15.56% over 30 days. Across all chains, tokenised stockholders reached 4.3 million by late September, a 43-fold rise in one year. BNB Chain represented 39% of on-chain RWA holders.
Those totals do not show whether holders can trade at useful size. Of 110 major tokenised products with market capitalisations above $10 million, just 29 met basic tests for both liquidity and distribution, roughly 26%. More than 50% of the market analysed had no meaningful secondary activity.
| Tokenised stocks | Tokenised rate products |
|---|---|
| Monthly turnover: 204.6% | Monthly turnover: 0.1% |
The contrast reflects what the assets are used for, rather than a uniform limit imposed by the underlying blockchain. Stocks were the most actively traded RWA category in June.
Treasury products, by contrast, are generally held rather than repeatedly exchanged. Their market value increased from $13 billion to $16.5 billion between Q1 and Q2 2026, while secondary trading remained slight. Private credit expanded from $4.1 billion to $5.1 billion and also had low turnover.
Reports point to uneven market structure
The IMF's October 2026 Global Financial Stability Report characterised tokenised markets as small, fragmented and relatively illiquid, with volatility roughly 1.5 times that of traditional equivalents. Repurchase agreements account for most activity, averaging $300 billion to $350 billion in daily volume. Credit, money market funds and tokenised equities together add $65 billion. The US repo market, on its own, trades about $13 trillion daily.
Gold-linked tokens provide a counterexample. PAXG and XAUT recorded $90.7 billion in spot volume in Q1 2026, above their combined full-year 2025 total of $84.64 billion. Their average monthly volumes were $5.72 billion and $5.32 billion respectively. An analysis first reported by Finance Magnates also notes that on platforms including Hyperliquid, June trading in perpetual futures tied to tokenised stocks totalled $67.8 billion.
That was 16 times the spot volume for the corresponding tokens. The article attributes that activity to use, easier shorting and liquidity from concentrated market-making, while spot tokens remain thinly traded.
Pantera's Tokenization Preparedness Index scored the sample 2.04, indicating that many products remain wrappers rather than instruments operating natively on-chain. The IMF report found that more than 50% of tokenised equity trading took place outside traditional market hours, while roughly 80% of analysed trades involved less than one share. These figures indicate use of fractional access, but do not by themselves demonstrate deep secondary markets.
What to watch next
For trading, risk and operations teams, the immediate check is whether dashboards distinguish holder counts from transfers, spot volume and executable depth. How are whitelist and approval limits reflected in client permissions? Can staff see which venues support trading for each product, and how do they reconcile activity across chains? The reports do not provide a common answer for these operational questions.
The article's author expects open-access tokens to account for more trading within two to three years, with RWAs used as collateral in DeFi lending and venues linking centralised order books with on-chain pools. The author also points to clearer regulation and products becoming more native to blockchains as conditions for that change. Operators should track whether market structure, venue access and product design develop alongside issuance, rather than treating growth in holders as evidence of liquidity.
