Real-world asset futures expanded from a small slice of on-chain derivatives into a market roughly the same size as crypto futures over nine months, according to a joint report from OKX and Token Terminal. The researchers said monthly RWA futures volume rose from $760 million in October 2025 to $107.6 billion in July 2026, while crypto futures recorded $105.7 billion in July.
The report links that shift to the Oct. 10, 2025 liquidation event, when more than $19 billion in leveraged crypto futures positions were wiped out across 1.6 million accounts. In the period that followed, activity did not simply return to the same mix of Bitcoin, Ether and Solana contracts, but increasingly spread into markets tied to commodities, public equities and private-company valuations.
A market reset after the October liquidation
OKX and Token Terminal described the October 2025 sell-off as a turning point for futures trading. The one-day liquidation total was about nine times larger than the previous record, the report said, and it coincided with a loss of share for major crypto contracts even as overall futures activity later recovered.
Nine months later, total open interest across the futures market had moved above its October level. The report said that mattered because open interest can indicate whether traders are maintaining positions rather than only generating short-lived volume by opening and closing contracts quickly.
By July, RWA futures and crypto futures were operating at nearly the same monthly scale for the first time in the period covered by the report. The researchers said that recovery was driven not by a return to the earlier crypto-heavy market structure, but by new demand for contracts linked to assets outside the core digital asset cycle.
Commodities and chips drove much of the expansion
The report said RWA futures increasingly moved with developments in the underlying markets they referenced rather than with Bitcoin alone. One example was oil: after strikes on Iran, daily volume in a West Texas Intermediate contract rose 149-fold within nine days as traders reacted to supply concerns and geopolitical risk.
Commodities became the largest RWA futures segment in January and accounted for 70% of category volume in March. That leadership later faded as activity rotated toward equity-linked products, leaving commodities with a 14% share by July.
Semiconductor and memory-related contracts then became the main source of growth. Monthly volume across four chip and memory names climbed from $600 million to $45.3 billion, which the report tied to rising memory prices and a broader shortage backdrop. By July, equities had become the largest segment within the RWA futures category.
Pre-IPO contracts added another channel for volume
Private-company futures also contributed to the shift. According to the report, pre-IPO futures reached $10.9 billion in monthly volume within three months of the first listing, with SpaceX leading the category during the period studied.
These products give traders exposure to a private company’s valuation through synthetic or perpetual futures contracts rather than through share ownership. The distinction is important: such contracts can mirror price expectations around a company without conferring stock, voting rights or a direct claim on the business.
The source article noted that Coinbase introduced a SpaceX-linked perpetual in June with leverage of up to five times, around-the-clock trading and USDC settlement. Coinbase said the contract offered price exposure only and warned of risks tied to valuation-based index pricing, limited liquidity and possible liquidations.
Availability still depends on venue and structure
The growth described in the OKX and Token Terminal report does not mean every RWA futures contract is broadly accessible, particularly in the United States. Access depends on where a trading venue operates, how a product is structured and whether the provider has the necessary regulatory status.
The article pointed to Coinbase’s SpaceX-linked contract as an example of that divide. Although Coinbase operates in the U.S., that specific product was not offered to users in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India or Australia.
For now, the clearest confirmed takeaway from the report is the change in market composition. During the nine months after the October 2025 liquidation event, leadership within RWA futures moved from indices to commodities and then to equities, while pre-IPO products quickly built meaningful volume. By July, RWA futures had reached parity with crypto futures in monthly trading volume across the period tracked by the researchers.
Source: crypto.news