Real-world asset futures trading has climbed from $760 million to $107.6 billion in nine months as commodities, equities and pre-IPO contracts have taken a larger share of on-chain derivatives activity.

RWA futures have matched crypto trading volume

OKX and Token Terminal said in a joint report that the change followed the Oct. 10, 2025 liquidation event, when more than $19 billion in leveraged crypto futures positions were wiped out across 1.6 million accounts.

The one-day total was about nine times larger than the previous record, according to the report. Bitcoin, Ether and Solana futures lost part of their share after the sell-off, while contracts linked to commodities, public companies and private firms attracted more trading activity.

Nine months later, total open interest across the futures market had moved above its October level, although the assets supporting that recovery had changed. Open interest measures the value of contracts that remain active and can help distinguish sustained positioning from volume created by positions that traders open and close quickly.

Monthly RWA futures volume increased from $760 million in October to $107.6 billion in July, a 142-fold rise. Crypto futures recorded $105.7 billion during July, placing the two categories at roughly the same scale for the first time in the period covered by the report.

“A single day in October 2025 reset trading in crypto [futures] contracts,” the report said, adding that growth in RWA contracts came from oil, silver, semiconductor, memory-chip and pre-IPO markets rather than the crypto cycle.

While Bitcoin, Ether and Solana remained major futures markets, the data showed that the recovery in sector-wide open interest did not simply restore the market mix that existed before the liquidation event. Contracts tied to assets outside crypto supplied a growing portion of the activity.

Oil and chip contracts have followed real-world events

Trading patterns also differed by the type of asset referenced in each contract, according to OKX and Token Terminal. Instead of moving mainly with Bitcoin or other crypto assets, several RWA futures markets reacted to news affecting their underlying commodities and companies.

Following strikes on Iran, daily volume in a West Texas Intermediate oil contract increased 149-fold within nine days. The report tied the move to the repricing of oil as traders responded to supply concerns and geopolitical risk.

Commodities became the largest RWA futures segment in January and accounted for 70% of category volume in March. Their share later fell to 14% by July as activity moved toward equity-linked contracts.

Semiconductor and memory-related futures led the next change. Monthly volume across four chip and memory names rose from $600 million to $45.3 billion as memory prices increased, according to the report.

By July, equities had become the largest part of the RWA futures category, with semiconductor-linked contracts leading the segment. The change followed an earlier period in late 2025 when index products accounted for the most activity.

Each category gained volume alongside developments in the market it tracked, the researchers said. Oil contracts responded to geopolitical events, while semiconductor contracts drew activity during the memory shortage and related price increases.

“Trading activity increasingly reflects developments in the underlying assets referenced by each contract,” the report said.

Open interest and participant data also indicated that the increase involved positions held beyond brief bursts of trading, according to the researchers. Their findings linked the growth to both the addition of new asset types and liquidity supplied by participants trading outside the main crypto contracts.

Pre-IPO futures have added $10.9B in monthly volume

Private-company contracts supplied another source of growth, with pre-IPO futures reaching $10.9 billion in monthly volume within three months of the first listing.

SpaceX led the category during the period examined by OKX and Token Terminal. Pre-IPO perpetual futures allow traders to take positions linked to a private company’s valuation without purchasing its shares.

As crypto.news reported in June, Coinbase introduced a SpaceX-linked perpetual contract with leverage of up to five times. The product traded around the clock, settled gains and losses in USDC, and was designed to convert into a standard perpetual contract if SpaceX completed a public listing.

Coinbase said the contract provided price exposure rather than equity ownership. Holders received no shares, voting rights or direct claim on the private company, a distinction that also applies to the way investors should assess pre-IPO derivatives against traditional private-market holdings.

The exchange also warned that valuation-based index pricing, limited liquidity and IPO conversion terms could expose traders to sharp price moves and liquidations. At the time of its launch, the product was unavailable in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Singapore, India and Australia.

Before SpaceX shares entered public markets, on-chain derivatives had already allowed traders to price the company through synthetic contracts. A July examination found that a SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual market had launched through Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework in May, weeks before the stock existed.

The $10.9 billion monthly figure in the OKX and Token Terminal report showed how quickly such products attracted volume, but the contracts represented price exposure rather than ownership in SpaceX or another private company.

US access has depended on the regulatory structure

For U.S. traders, the growth of RWA futures does not mean every contract counted in the report is available through domestic platforms. Product access depends on where a venue operates, how the contract is structured, and whether the provider has the required regulatory status.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversees U.S. derivatives markets, including designated contract markets, clearing organizations and registered intermediaries. In May, CFTC staff issued guidance covering the obligations of regulated entities seeking to offer trading and clearing around the clock.

Coinbase’s SpaceX-linked pre-IPO product illustrated the difference between global availability and U.S. access. Although Coinbase operates in the country, the exchange excluded U.S. users from that specific contract while offering it in supported jurisdictions through Coinbase Advanced.

For American investors, buying a listed stock also differs from opening a perpetual futures position tied to the same company or asset. A share gives its holder an ownership interest in a company, while a cash-settled perpetual contract provides exposure to changes in a reference price and may involve leverage, funding payments, and forced liquidation.

RWA futures can also track several types of underlying markets, including oil, silver, stock indices, individual companies and private-company valuations. The OKX and Token Terminal data grouped those contracts by the assets they referenced, showing how category leadership moved from indices to commodities and later to equities during the nine-month period.

By July, commodity contracts represented 14% of RWA futures volume after controlling 70% in March. Equity contracts had taken the top position as trading in semiconductor and memory names rose to $45.3 billion, while pre-IPO markets had reached $10.9 billion within their first three months.

Day-one DEX volume on Arc finished at around $82 million, compared with the $878 million Robinhood Chain did on July 12, when its own institutional pitch was overtaken by memecoins and a cat token briefly hit a $156 million market cap. Arc’s largest token, ARGUS, is worth $16 million. Its second- and third-largest are cirBTC and EURC — Circle’s own products.

The sharper criticism is that Circle invited this. Rachel Mayer, Circle’s VP of product for Arc, posted an AI-generated image promoting DUKE, a memecoin, writing that it was Allaire’s dog. The post drew about 1 million views and a wave of hostile replies accusing Circle of shilling tokens to bootstrap its own network.

“You can clearly see a lot of their team fundamentally misunderstands meme culture,” wrote Abbas Khan. “Now it’s stuck in this weird middle ground where nobody really knows whether it’s supposed to be a meme chain or a corporate stablecoin chain.”

Circle did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The chain itself is performing as designed, with half-second blocks being processed with no congestion, and DeFi platforms like Aave and Morpho live. But waning sentiment has led to feelings of frustration from the memecoin crowd, despite speculative token activity driving most of the day-one volume.

Bitcoin (BTC) traded near $76,500 after Thursday’s Wall Street open as investors snapped up US stocks following their recent dip.

Key points:

• Bitcoin consolidated after dropping below $76,000 on the back of a 0.25% interest-rate hike by the US Federal Reserve. 
• US equities rebounded, with the Nasdaq Composite Index gaining 1.5% as analysis saw upside continuation.
• Bitcoin price analysis retained its bullish slant on market conditions, with CryptoQuant’s Bull Score Index circling 60/100 on Thursday.

Bitcoin halts losses as US stocks turn green

Data from TradingView showed that BTC price volatility was cooling over the last 24 hours, with only modest moves to take nearby liquidity. 

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Data from CoinGlass showed both bid and ask liquidity thickening around the current spot price, a typical feature of rangebound trading conditions.

BTC/USDT liquidation heatmap (Binance). Source: CoinGlass

US equities gained on the day, as investors sought to capitalize on the local downside that followed policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve. The S&P 500 Index and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index gained 0.9% and 1.5%, respectively.

Nasdaq Composite Index one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

On Wednesday, the Fed voted to increase benchmark interest rates by 25 basis points to 3.75-4%. This was its first hike since July 2023, and signaled an end to three years of easing in which the Fed either cut rates or held them in the same range between meetings.

Commenting, trading resource The Kobeissi Letter suggested that assets would continue to perform strongly despite the prospect of lower-liquidity conditions associated with the rate hikes. As Cointelegraph reported, central-bank rates are notching higher globally, as the European Central Bank hiked by 0.25% last week and the Bank of Japan is expected to follow suit on Friday.

“The asset owner economy just keeps getting better,” it wrote in a post on X, referencing the day’s gains in the Nasdaq.

Analysis sees BTC price trend “cooling, not turning”

Bitcoin also enjoyed relief after falling to new month-to-date lows on Tuesday. At the time of writing, BTC/USD traded 0.5% higher on the day.

Related: Bitcoin treasuries buy just 5.9K BTC in three months as paper losses linger

Commenting on the current market landscape, onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant described macro conditions as a hurdle to the continuation of Bitcoin’s previous rebound that totaled 25% in August.

“The trend is still bullish, but momentum and macro are working against it near-term,” head of research Julio Moreno wrote in its latest weekly report sent to Cointelegraph.

Moreno noted that one of CryptoQuant’s proprietary indicators tracking BTC price cycles, the Bull Score Index, had dropped from 80 to 60 — the cut-off point for what it describes as “bullish conditions.”

“Bitcoin is cooling, not turning. A Bull Score of 60 keeps the trend bullish, but fading US demand, rising altcoin inflows, and a week of macro risk — the delay of the CLARITY Act and a likely Fed hike — argue for consolidation. Watch $70K and $62K–$65K as support,” the report summarized.

Bitcoin Bull Score Index. Source: CryptoQuant

Fortitude Mining has appointed former Hut 8 CEO Jaime Leverton as chief executive as the Zcash-focused miner prepares to go public through a proposed merger with HeartSciences. Leverton will succeed Andrea Childs as CEO on Sept. 21, with Childs moving to chief operating officer.

Fortitude mined 72,696 ZEC in the first half of 2026, accounting for about 28% of the network’s total production during the period. The company reported revenue of $20.9 million for the second quarter.

It operates more than 60 megawatts of power capacity across seven sites in South Dakota, Nebraska, Texas and New York, and in July agreed to purchase 9,000 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro machines, which are expected to add 7.56 GSol/s of equihash hashrate. Shipments are expected in the fourth quarter.

Fortitude, wholly owned by Digital Currency Group, has mined ZEC since 2019 and launched as a vertically integrated mining platform in 2025.

The company announced its proposed combination with HeartSciences in June, with the transaction expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 and bring Fortitude to the public markets. The combined company is expected to trade on Nasdaq under the ticker TUDE, subject to approval.

Leverton previously served as CEO of Hut 8, where she oversaw the Bitcoin miner’s merger with US Bitcoin Corp. and its transition into a US-domiciled Nasdaq-listed company. Current CEO Andrea Childs will transition to the chief operating officer role.

Related: Cypherpunk launches Zcash mining fleet controlling 18% of network hashrate

Zcash surges amid Paradigm investment

Zcash continued its rally on Thursday, with ZEC, the native token of the blockchain designed to enable private transactions using zero-knowledge proofs, trading around $1,424. The token has gained about 185% over the past 30 days and more than 2,600% over the past year, according to CoinGecko.

The latest gains came after Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang disclosed Wednesday that the crypto investment firm holds ZEC and is an investor in the Zcash Open Development Lab.

Huang described Zcash as a “private complement to Bitcoin” and backed its inflation-funded developer fund, arguing that long-term funding for privacy technology is increasingly important as artificial intelligence and quantum computing advance.

Over the past year, privacy-focused cryptocurrencies have outperformed the broader crypto market. As of Sept. 6, the sector was up 213% from Bitcoin’s October 2025 peak, while every other crypto sector tracked by Glassnode remained below its level at the time.

ZEC accounted for 62% of the privacy sector’s market capitalization, according to Glassnode data. Excluding ZEC, the firm’s cap-weighted basket of privacy tokens was still up 85% over the past year.

Source: Glassnode

Importantly, the index is designed not only to provide broader exposure across the crypto market, but also to limit concentration in its largest assets. Bitcoin and ether represent a large share of total crypto market capitalization, meaning a traditional market-cap-weighted index would be dominated by those two assets.

The CoinDesk 20 Index addresses that concentration through a modified market capitalization weighting methodology. The index applies:

· 30% cap on the largest constituent

· 20% cap on all other constituents

These caps limit concentration in a single crypto asset and allow other major cryptocurrencies to play a larger role in the index.

Left: Source: CoinDesk, as of June 30, 2026. Right: ProShares hypothetical calculation using the CoinDesk 20 Index constituents, weighted by market capitalization without the index caps, as of June 30, 2026. For illustrative purposes only.

Without these caps, the index would largely reflect the performance of bitcoin and ether alone. By limiting concentration in the largest assets, the CoinDesk 20 Index creates more balanced exposure across a wider set of cryptocurrencies.

There is also a practical consideration. Building similar exposure directly would require an investor to purchase, custody and periodically rebalance a relatively large number of individual crypto assets. The infrastructure surrounding crypto custody has improved considerably, but holding multiple cryptocurrencies can still require navigating different exchanges, wallets, custody arrangements and operational considerations. An index-based approach can simplify that process while maintaining exposure to changes occurring across the broader market.