Pantera Capital Tokenized Market Report: After Assets Go On-Chain, Where Are the Real Demand and Opportunities?

Original Author: Pantera Capital

Original Translation: Jia Huan, ChainCatcher

Five Key Findings

Tokenization is undergoing a structural shift: issuing tokens on-chain is no longer difficult. The next phase focuses on building compliant, liquid secondary markets with more efficient use of capital. Although the total value of tokenized assets across categories continues to expand, trading volumes and market participation remain markedly uneven.

This report combines quantitative data through June 30, 2026, with key operational developments in the third quarter, including Robinhood Chain's performance through August 31 and key policy updates in September.

Across the 671 assets and $331.8 billion in market size we track, growth is expanding from stablecoins into more areas. From Q1 to Q2, the tokenized value of non-stablecoin assets grew 13.3%, with opportunities becoming more diverse across asset classes and use cases.

At the same time, tokenization is expanding adoption along multiple paths. Traders gain stock price exposure through on-chain derivatives, retail-facing platforms like Robinhood bring tokenized assets into new distribution channels, and lending markets put tokenized collateral to work.

For banks, asset managers, and wealth management platforms, these changes create opportunities to serve clients through new trading, investment, and financing products.

This report examines where these activities are emerging and what is needed to support them. The five key findings are as follows:

On-chain stock trading shows strong demand for price exposure. In June, stock perpetual contract volume on Hyperliquid and Lighter reached $67.8 billion, roughly 16 times the observable on-chain spot trading volume of tokenized stocks. These derivatives allow traders to establish positions without holding the underlying tokenized assets.

This comparison demonstrates active demand for price exposure, but due to differences in leverage, repeated trading, and statistical coverage, it is not a comparison of actual capital deployed or unique user counts.

Robinhood Chain achieved initial results in expanding distribution of tokenized stocks and ETFs after launch. Its curated offerings include well-known companies such as Nvidia, Apple, and Tesla, as well as ETFs like SPY and QQQ. In the first month after its July 1 launch, the value of tracked tokenized assets grew to roughly five times its previous level.

Trading grew alongside it: weekly RWA trading volume rose from $5 million in the first week to $887.5 million in the last week of August, with its share of the chain's DEX trading volume rising from 0.1% to 12.9%. These data indicate that the product launch is translating into actual holdings and growing trading interest, though early wallet balances remain concentrated.

Access conditions determine where public markets can form. Among 110 non-stablecoin products each worth at least $10 million, open-access products accounted for 41% of total value at the end of June but contributed 99.8% of observable spot trading volume that month. Transfer restrictions may narrow the pool of eligible buyers and trading venues.

Product composition also matters: permissioned assets are concentrated in yield-oriented funds, so this comparison cannot measure the impact of access conditions in isolation.

Secondary market trading activity is not a universal measure of tokenization success. Beyond access restrictions, low spot trading volume may also mean a product was designed for holding rather than frequent trading.

For stock tokens, turnover can reflect liquidity conditions, market depth, and execution quality; for tokenized Treasury funds, yield and reliable redemption may matter more than trading frequency; for credit assets used as collateral, borrowing activity and reliable liquidation or redemption arrangements are most important. Evaluating these products requires matching metrics to their intended use.

Institutions should focus on market infrastructure that can be built under the current regulatory framework. The CLARITY Act failed to advance in the Senate procedure on September 15, and more comprehensive U.S. market structure legislation remains unresolved.

However, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)'s conditional exemption on September 17 for certain tokenized stock trading venues and liquidity providers offers a concrete path forward. These changes require institutions to develop approaches on a product-by-product basis: first determine the viable regulatory path, then build infrastructure to serve eligible investors within that scope.

For trading-oriented assets, this means bringing in qualified market makers and trading venues that can meet product transfer requirements; for yield-oriented funds, reliable redemption may deserve higher priority. As the overall framework gradually improves, institutions can improve client access and product availability through these specific measures.

Part One: How Are Tokenized Assets Traded, Held, and Used for Financing?

Open-Access Products Contributed 99.8% of Observable Spot Trading Volume in June

Tokenized assets are numerous, but a token being on-chain does not mean it automatically has a public market. Many tokens still primarily move between wallets or are held to earn yield.

In June, BUIDL's wallet-to-wallet transfers totaled $441 million, USTB $339 million, and Spiko's European fund $353 million. These transfers may involve subscriptions, redemptions, custody, collateral, yield strategies, and other operational activities. They show that tokens are being used on-chain, but they do not represent de-duplicated investment flows or public price discovery.

Public secondary market trading requires eligible buyers and sellers, trading venues that support the product, and asset inventory available for participants to trade. Products with zero spot trading volume also have no token inventory of meaningful size in related DEX pools. For permissioned products, transfer restrictions may prevent ordinary public pools from functioning properly. Investors may instead use issuer channels or permissioned channels, and these activities are not captured in spot trading data. Therefore, the absence of observed spot trading does not prove that investors cannot exit.

This section classifies products into five asset categories: rates, equities, commodities, credit, and private funds. Rates covers U.S. and non-U.S. government debt and money market instruments; credit covers private credit and corporate credit; private funds covers actively managed strategies and private equity. Synthetic yield-bearing dollar tokens such as USDe are classified as stablecoins and excluded from this analysis sample.

Products are also divided into open-access and permissioned groups based on the rules governing token transfers, rather than investor eligibility requirements at subscription.

Open-access products impose no identity or address restrictions at the transfer stage: any address can receive the token and trade it on venues that support the product, even if the issuer still requires KYC identity verification at share creation or redemption. Permissioned products impose restrictions on the transfer itself, allowing tokens to circulate only between approved addresses.

The June 2026 sample includes 110 non-stablecoin products, each with a month-end market value of at least $10 million. Of these, 51 permissioned products total $16.5 billion in value, and 59 open-access products total $11.5 billion.

Permissioned products account for 59% of total sample value but contributed only 0.2% of observable spot trading volume; open-access products account for 41% of total value and contributed 99.8% of trading volume, or $4.8 billion. Overall, open-access products' June trading volume was roughly 41% of their market value, but trading remained concentrated in a smaller subset of products.

BlackRock's BUIDL, Franklin's iBENJI, and Hashnote's USYC all restrict token recipients. Tether Gold, PAX Gold, and Syrup USDC have no such transfer restrictions. Both groups almost always screen investors at subscription; the real difference is whether the token can subsequently enter public trading venues.

Access conditions and asset classes are somewhat intertwined. Permissioned products are concentrated in categories primarily used for holding: 81% of rates asset value belongs to permissioned products, 8% for equities, and zero for commodities. Rates assets account for $16.7 billion of the sample's $28 billion total value, so roughly four-fifths of all permissioned asset value is concentrated in this category, which is typically bought for yield and redeemed with the issuer.

The gap of "59% of value but only 0.2% of trading volume" partly stems from product composition, not just access conditions. Private funds assets are 71% permissioned, but had a 9.4% turnover rate in June; credit is 46% permissioned, with a 9.5% turnover rate. Both are roughly 100 times the 0.1% turnover rate for rates.

Permission requirements limit which trading venues tokens can access, but the extent of that limitation also depends on whether the product was designed for trading in the first place.

Free Transferability Does Not Guarantee Liquidity

Category-level turnover rate is calculated by summing the trading volume of all products in that category and dividing by their combined market value. A few highly active tokens can push this figure higher even when other tokens barely trade. Therefore, a high category turnover rate does not mean individual products are broadly active.

Equities illustrate this distinction well. Among the sample of 47 stock products with market values above $10 million, only 12 had turnover rates below 1%. These products total $260 million in value, about 18% of the equities category's $1.5 billion total value. Most equity asset value met the threshold, while a few highly active tokens traded at multiples of their own size, pushing the entire category's turnover rate to 204.6%.

Rates products, by contrast, consistently maintain low turnover. Of the 42 months observed, 38 had monthly turnover rates below 1%, and June was just 0.1%. Treasury funds are typically held for yield and redeemed through the issuer; stocks and commodities may trade more frequently around market prices.

Chart: Monthly spot turnover rates by asset class. In June 2026, equities were 204.6%, rates 0.1%, and commodities, credit, and private funds were 16.7%, 9.5%, and 9.4%, respectively.

Products lacking trading also exist within the open-access group. Products worth $3.4 billion, or 29.5% of the group's total value, had observable spot turnover rates below 1% in June. About $3 billion of that came from two products: Ondo's USDY, with a market value of $2.1 billion and a 0.1% turnover rate; and Spiko's European fund, at roughly $900 million, with no observed spot trading.

The 1% threshold is a consistent standard for measuring public secondary market activity, not a definition of liquidity.

Grouping U.S. and non-U.S. government debt together also obscures real differences in usage. The dollar is the universal unit of account in on-chain markets, with pricing, quoting, and collateral conventions built around it. As a result, tokenized U.S. Treasury bills can be held, used as collateral, and redeemed without an additional currency choice.

Euro, Brazilian real, and Mexican peso products face a different situation: a smaller natural holder base in the local currency, fewer local currency quotes, and an implied foreign exchange conversion for most on-chain counterparties. Even instruments with similar credit quality and structure may therefore show different turnover rates. Non-dollar government debt currently accounts for only about 7% of rates assets, and aggregate data cannot yet clearly reveal this difference.

Rates Assets Had a 0.1% Turnover Rate, Equities 204.6%

Trading infrastructure faces a chicken-and-egg problem. Market depth can only accumulate when trading volume and liquidity providers' fee revenue grow. More volatile, actively traded assets are easier to bootstrap because turnover generates enough fees to attract liquidity providers.

Low-turnover instruments cannot do this. A tokenized Treasury bill that trades only a few times a month can barely generate returns for liquidity providers, so capital leaves or never enters. Less trading means fewer fees; fewer fees mean thinner market depth; thin depth in turn discourages the next trade.

This explains why an instrument that is highly liquid in traditional markets may still appear illiquid on-chain. The main constraint is not the quality of the underlying asset, but the design of the trading venue. Automated market makers rely on turnover to generate revenue, and hold-oriented instruments cannot provide enough trading. Request-for-quote execution, market-making incentives, and issuer-supported redemptions are better suited to these products than fee-reliant pools.

Take selling $10 million in assets as an example: if daily volume is capped at 15% of June's observable average daily spot trading volume, rates products would require about 126.5 days, and equities about 0.5 days. Private funds would take 11.2 days, credit 4.9 days, and commodities 2.8 days.

Chart: Estimated days required to sell $10 million in assets at 15% of each category's average daily spot trading volume. This estimate does not include issuer redemption channels and does not account for price impact on large trades.

This estimate does not include issuer subscription and redemption channels. Eligible investors can redeem directly with the issuer, subject to different timelines. Therefore, even if fund tokens rarely trade, the fund may still offer a practical exit route.

Trading volume tells us how quickly asset value has circulated in the past, but not how much can be executed at a given quote. Among observed products, the largest in-pool inventory on the RWA asset side is Tether Gold, distributed across 109 pool addresses totaling about $24 million. However, the dataset does not include the price-level state needed to estimate price impact for large trades, or centralized exchange internal order books.

Assets Span More Blockchains, but Wallet Holdings Remain Uneven

Asset distribution needs to be measured at three levels: which chains assets are deployed on, how many addresses hold them, and how much value the largest holdings control.

At the infrastructure level, tracked non-stablecoin assets expanded from being deployed on just 3 chains in January 2023 to 23 chains in June 2026. Over the same period, the largest chain's share fell from 87.8% to 53.8%, a drop of 34 percentage points; the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index measuring market concentration fell from 0.8 to 0.3, with lower values indicating greater dispersion.

Multi-chain deployment has gone from a minority occurrence to a fundamental feature of the market. At quarter-end, Ethereum still accounted for 53.8% of tracked asset value; Solana's asset value was less than one-fifth of Ethereum's but recorded more holder addresses.

Chart: Changes in non-stablecoin RWA market value on selected chains. Asset deployment has gradually expanded to more networks, with Ethereum still holding the largest asset share.

Holder counts need to be interpreted alongside balance concentration. A large address may represent a single investor, an issuer or treasury management wallet, a vault, or an omnibus custody account. On-chain balance concentration and the distribution of actual beneficial ownership may not be the same.

Among rates assets, the largest holding's share of category value fell from 89.3% to 18