RWA perpetual futures reach $18.8 billion a day as altcoins face new competition for attention

Real-world asset perpetual volume hits $18.8 billion a day

Daily trading in perpetual futures tied to real-world assets rose from less than $1 billion in January to $18.8 billion during Sept. 3-9 across the venues tracked by Talos, the firm said in its September market report. That was 18.5% of all futures volume on those venues.

Perpetual futures are contracts that let traders take leveraged bets on a price without an expiry date. The real-world asset (RWA) versions covered in the data wrap exposure to equities, commodities and indices. Crypto exchanges built their derivatives businesses around perpetuals, and the same contract type now covers oil, gold, stocks, indices and pre-IPO companies.

Talos data show crypto perpetual volume fell over the comparison period while total futures activity in its sample stayed roughly flat, with traditional-asset contracts filling the gap. That change in product mix puts altcoins, or crypto tokens other than bitcoin, in a harder fight for trader attention.

Key numbers from the Talos report

• RWA perpetual volume reached $18.8 billion a day in the Sept. 3-9 window, up from less than $1 billion in January.
• That equaled 18.5% of futures volume across the venues Talos tracks.
• Traditional-asset perpetuals made up 28% of futures volume on Hyperliquid and 24.8% on Binance in Talos' sample.
• Oil led the weekly increase as Brent crude crossed $100.
• Crypto perpetual volume declined over the period while total futures activity in the sample was roughly flat.

Hyperliquid wallets mostly stay in the market they entered through

Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework lets outside builders deploy markets, including contracts linked to stocks and commodities. DefiLlama split new Hyperliquid wallets into two groups based on the market of their first trade: RWA-first wallets and Other-first wallets, whose first trade was in crypto or another non-RWA market.

• From Jan. 1 through June 30, DefiLlama classified 169,514 new wallets as RWA-first. They were 31.7% of new wallets and produced $111.6 billion, or 31.5%, of the trading volume generated by new users.
• Those same wallets paid only 8.3% of the main trading fees from new users in the study.
• RWA-first wallets kept 83.6% of their volume in RWA markets.
• Other-first wallets sent 22.8% of their volume into RWA markets and produced roughly 40% of RWA-market volume.
• A follow-up DefiLlama study found 80.9% of RWA-first wallets never crossed into the other market, while 82% of Other-first wallets never crossed into RWA markets.
• The user base divides into three broad groups: RWA-first wallets that mostly stay with those products, crypto-first wallets that mostly stay with crypto, and a smaller high-frequency core that treats both as trading opportunities.

August exchange data show crypto and traditional-asset trading growing together

CoinDesk Research reported that centralized-exchange volume rose 12.7% month over month to $4.29 trillion in August. Spot volume increased 18.7%, derivatives rose 11.3%, and traditional-asset perpetual volume increased 2.37% to $602 billion. Both traditional-asset and crypto activity expanded that month.

CryptoRank counted 351 new listings across 10 major centralized exchanges in the second quarter, the fewest since the third quarter of 2023. Tokenized assets accounted for 42 additions, while categories tied to the previous speculative cycle lost momentum. Gate was responsible for 573 removals, nearly 60% of delistings in the first half, and MEXC rarely reported delistings and was effectively left out of that part of the analysis.

Binance Research reported that 58.5% of early bStocks users, referring to Binance's tokenized-stock product, also used perpetuals, direct equities, or both. Those figures show overlap but do not reveal whether users moved money between products.

Why an altcoin liquidity drain is not proven

Wallet data point to mostly separate groups of traders, with a smaller group active in both markets. That leaves any direct drain of liquidity from altcoins unproven.

• The source of capital behind RWA-first wallets remains unknown, and changes to the crypto positions of Other-first wallets were not measured.
• Inside CryptoRank's sample, RWA trading cannot be blamed for the delistings recorded, and reporting gaps limited the cross-exchange picture.
• August figures show the two categories can also grow at the same time, though substitution could still happen within a specific venue or account.

Why altcoins face a tougher contest for attention

Traders no longer need a new token to find leverage, volatility, or a market that stays open around the clock. Market makers have finite balance sheets, exchanges have limited promotional capacity, and traders have limited attention. Familiar stocks and commodities now compete with altcoins inside the same apps and collateral systems.

Sources

• CryptoSlate

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