Public equities take the lead in new perpetual futures markets
Public equities are leading the growth of RWA markets. While RWA started out with bonds and money funds, tokenizing stocks has started to find a use case in the category. Public equities are coming on-chain at a higher rate, becoming a key type of RWA. The ability to trade some of the hottest trending stocks is also changing the entire crypto ecosystem, offering new life to otherwise less active exchanges. While institutions are still interested in BTC, ETH, and some tokens, equities are taking the attention of retail, as well as whale-sized traders. Public equities spark a new wave of trading According to Cryptorank data, public equities have 411 active markets, with over $2B in open interest as of July 2026. The weight of public equities has grown to 46% of the market, already breaking above $2.4B in daily trading volumes. The recent trend shows the idea of RWA is mostly used for access to leveraged trading and permissionless stock positions. RWA is not widely used for less liquid assets, and trading is still the key use case of tokenization. While tokenization continues even without trading, the bulk of open interest and daily activity comes from a handful of leading US equities. RWA holders are also a