Heechang Kang argues that 2027 could be a decisive year for tokenized assets, and says the signs are already visible in this year’s data. Thousands of stocks, commodities, private companies and index products are now onchain, but trading remains concentrated at a small number of venues.
According to RootData, the market is no longer mainly competing on who can issue the most products. The more important test is who can actually distribute those products and execute around them. The companies that come out ahead, Kang writes, will be the ones that turn broad catalogs into concentrated liquidity, repeat trading and returning users.
The analysis draws primarily from the RootData tokenized asset dashboard, using metrics including volume, open interest, market share, spreads, depth and asset coverage. Issuer comparisons use supplemental public data, while the broader comparison across centralized and onchain venues relies on CoinMarketCap Research’s dataset covering RWA perpetual contracts at 19 venues.
Issuers: the top three control 72%
Tokenized stocks currently have $2.91 billion in transferable circulating value, held by 3.17 million holders. In this context, transferable circulating value refers to token market capitalization that can leave the issuer platform and move between wallets. Over the past 30 days, that value rose 7.43%, while the number of holders climbed 174.29%, showing that user growth is running far ahead of capital growth.
That puts average holdings at about $918 per holder. Kang says that profile looks less like institutional allocation and more like small wallets trying the product for the first time. Monthly transfer volume came in at $13.31 billion, about 4.6 times circulating value, but it fell 52.65% over the same period even as new holders continued to arrive in size. Access is spreading faster than usage habits are forming.
The next figure worth watching, he writes, is how many of those holders come back for a second and third trade.
Ondo, bStocks and xStocks together control about 72% of reported tokenized stock value. That gives those three issuers meaningful influence over custody, redemption, network choice and where liquidity ultimately settles.
For the rest of the field, the article argues that issuing hundreds of barely traded tokens is less compelling than building a narrower lineup with clear legal rights, redemption that works under stress and enough order-book depth to absorb real orders.
Venues: Binance leads, Hyperliquid anchors onchain liquidity
CoinMarketCap and RootData data show that 2026 year-to-date RWA perpetual volume is concentrated at a few venues. Binance handled $1.59 trillion, Hyperliquid HIP-3 recorded $542.8 billion, OKX posted $345.1 billion and Bitget reached $238.2 billion. Together, they accounted for about 86% of the $3.16 trillion market.
Hyperliquid was the only onchain venue in that group, representing 17.2% of total volume.
The balance between centralized and onchain venues also shifted during the year. As stock perpetuals gained traction, traders moved back toward centralized order books. Onchain venues saw their market share drop from about 45% in December to 13% in August, while Binance’s monthly share climbed to 54.1%.
Set against the number of listings, the mismatch becomes more obvious. Gate ran the broadest product shelf in the market, with 405 tickers, but cleared only $148.5 billion, or about 4.7% of total volume. Binance, by contrast, processed $1.59 trillion with just 179 tickers.
- Bitget: 302 listings and $238.2 billion in volume
- Bybit: 224 listings and $105.2 billion in volume
- OKX: 168 listings and $345.1 billion in volume
- Hyperliquid: 161 listings and $542.8 billion in volume
The comparison suggests that listing breadth does not automatically turn into meaningful depth. Liquidity concentration matters more.
Assets: volume follows scarce access
A consistent pattern appears in what traders are actually choosing to trade: semiconductors, leveraged tech products, crypto-sensitive stocks, commodities and private companies. In the expanded snapshot, SanDisk (SNDK), the SOXL ETF (SOXL), SK Hynix (SKHYNIX), Micron (MU) and SpaceX (SPCX) ranked near the top.
An earlier RootData snapshot of Binance showed daily volume at $1.79 billion for gold (XAU), $1.61 billion for SK Hynix (SKHYNIX) and $1.17 billion for SpaceX (SPCX).
The article says those assets serve different needs. Gold offers ongoing macro exposure. SK Hynix gives traders a clean around-the-clock way to express a view on the AI memory cycle. SpaceX opens access that most investors cannot get through traditional channels.
The clearest signal in the data, Kang writes, is that tokenized markets gain traction when they solve an access problem or open a trading window that did not exist before. SK Hynix, for example, could only be traded in Korea before it listed in the U.S. through an ADR. By comparison, copying highly liquid U.S. equities that traditional brokers already offer cheaply and efficiently has shown limited payoff.
That points to stronger opportunities in private companies, Asian equities, commodities and thematic baskets, where access gaps are real. Structure still matters, though, because perpetuals, synthetic tokens and legally backed stock tokens give holders very different rights.
The leaders that stand out, the article says, will be those that combine access others cannot offer with credible legal claims and liquidity deep enough to earn trust.
What comes next
Taken together, the issuer, venue and asset data suggest that competition in tokenized assets is moving away from expanding product catalogs and toward demonstrating real usage and liquidity.
That means issuer performance should be judged more by metrics such as the number of repeat-trading holders, redemption activity and transfer volume per holder than by the cumulative number of assets issued. Those indicators do more to show whether users are only trying a product once or continuing to hold and trade it, giving a clearer picture of the underlying business and how sustainable its growth may be.
The same logic applies at the asset level. Private companies, Asian stocks, commodities and thematic products that are difficult to access in traditional finance, or constrained by time and geography, give investors a clear reason to use crypto markets. Assets that are already easy and cheap to access through traditional brokers are less likely to draw enough onchain demand through replication alone.
Kang concludes that the industry expanded the potential of tokenized assets this year by bringing a broad set of products to market. The coming year will show which products and platforms can generate repeat trading and sustainable liquidity. In his view, the companies that combine hard-to-reach asset access with credible legal rights, reliable operating structures and enough liquidity to absorb real orders will lead the market’s next stage of growth.