2026 – the year of RWA perps?

In 2025, we predicted that stablecoin market, widely accepted as the first successful use case of real world asset (RWA) tokenisation, would grow significantly in both supply and volume.

The next phase of real world asset (RWA) tokenisation

In 2025, we predicted that stablecoin market, widely accepted as the first successful use case of real world asset (RWA) tokenisation, would grow significantly in both supply and volume. That prediction was due in part to their role in fulfilling a number of stated goals of the Trump 2.0 administration, as well as regulatory advancements in the US to establish guard rails for crypto assets and stablecoins (such as the GENIUS Act and CLARITY Act). As seen in Figure 1 below, growth in tokenised assets in crypto has begun to scale exponentially, particularly since 2024. That was driven by a combination of institutional and retail user interest.

Figure 1. Market cap of tokenised assets since 2020. Sources: Artemis, Block Scholes

A tokenised asset is essentially an on-chain representation of an off-chain asset, such as 1 USDT or USDC representing $1 off-chain. Stablecoins were the first layer of tokenisation, with the second layer being the tokenisation of further offchain, RWAs such as equities and commodities. In our view, the next phase of RWAs and a potential major trend of 2026 will be the development of perpetual futures contracts on those same RWAs (in equities, foreign exchange, commodities and more).