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Benjamin Cowen Reveals Why The Altcoin Season Never Came

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Benjamin Cowen Reveals Why The Altcoin Season Never Came

For most of 2025, altcoin holders were waiting. Watching Bitcoin climb to a new all-time high near $126,000, they expected what had always followed — the familiar rotation, the altcoin surge, the season that rewards patience with explosive gains. It never came.

Benjamin Cowen, founder of IntoTheCryptoverse, wasn’t surprised. He had a name for what was happening, and it changed everything.

“This is a cycle where Bitcoin topped on apathy rather than euphoria.”

That single phrase explains more about the 2025 cycle than any price target or on-chain metric. And to understand why, you need to follow the data across four charts — from social sentiment, through market structure, all the way to the deepest layers of the global macro economy.


The Top That Looked Normal, But Wasn’t

Bitcoin did exactly what it always does. It peaked in Q4 of the post-halving year, right on schedule, consistent with every prior four-year cycle. On the surface, nothing was broken. Look closer, however, and something was fundamentally different.

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Cowen’s Social Metrics Historical Risk chart tells the story visually. The chart color-codes Bitcoin’s price history by the level of social engagement at each point in time — warm colors (red, orange) for high engagement, cool colors (blue) for low.

In 2017 and 2021, Bitcoin topped in a blaze of red and orange. Social interest was at peak levels. Retail was flooding in. Everyone was talking about crypto.

Social Metrics Historical Risk chart / Source: YouTube

In 2025, Bitcoin printed its all-time high in cold blue. Social engagement was near-historic lows at the exact moment the market reached its peak.

No retail frenzy or mainstream headlines are driving fresh money in. Just a quiet, almost invisible top — what Benjamin Cowen defines as apathy.

“In 2017 and 2021 we topped on euphoria and because we topped on euphoria there was a rotation into the higher risk assets — altcoins. But when you top on apathy you don’t get that same rotation.”

The only other time this happened was in 2019. That observation is where everything begins.

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Benjamin Cowen: Why Apathy Kills the Altcoin Season

In a euphoric cycle, the sequence is predictable. Bitcoin tops, early investors take profits, and that capital rotates into higher-risk assets — altcoins. The crowd, still buzzing with excitement, chases the next opportunity. Alt season follows almost mechanically.

Apathy breaks that sequence entirely. When Bitcoin tops on indifference rather than excitement, there is no crowd waiting to rotate.

The retail wave that normally fuels altcoin rallies simply never arrived. And without new buyers entering the market, altcoins have nowhere to go but down.

Cowen puts it with characteristic bluntness:

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“But when you top on apathy, like in 2019, you don’t get that rotation. And the reason you don’t get that rotation is that there’s just no one left to sell the altcoins to.”

The consequence is visible in the altcoin total market cap chart. Rather than the sharp post-Bitcoin rotation that altcoin holders were expecting, the chart shows something more painful — a slow, relentless bleed. Altcoins losing ground to Bitcoin not just in the bear market, but throughout the entire cycle, both during the bull run and after it ended.

TOTAL3 vs Bitcoin Dominance Chart. Source: YouTube

This is not a coincidence or bad luck. It is a direct consequence of the macro environment in which this cycle occurred.


The Macro Context: 2019 and 2025 Show the Same Story

Most crypto analysts treat Bitcoin as its own ecosystem, governed purely by halving cycles and on-chain mechanics. Benjamin Cowen argues that it is only half the picture.

The global business cycle — the broader rhythm of economic expansion, late-cycle stress, and recession — shapes not when Bitcoin tops, but how investors behave when it does.

His Business Cycles chart, built by normalizing a composite of S&P 500 performance, unemployment, interest rates, inflation, and M2 money supply, makes the argument visually.

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From Bitcoin’s earliest days through approximately 2019, the macro environment was in an early business cycle phase — the long recovery following the 2008 financial crisis. Risk appetite was structurally high. Investors were willing to climb the risk ladder, moving from equities to Bitcoin to altcoins.

Business Cycles M2-Normalized chart / Source: YouTube

In a late business cycle environment, that risk appetite reverses. Investors don’t reach for more risk — they pull back from it. They consolidate into quality. In crypto terms, that means Bitcoin, not altcoins. It explains why, in both 2019 and 2025, altcoins bled to Bitcoin even as Bitcoin itself was still rising. The macro environment was actively working against the rotation altcoin holders had been counting on.

“The reason why this cycle feels different is because this is a late business cycle environment. And the only other time we had a late business cycle environment where altcoins bled out to Bitcoin even after Bitcoin topped without a rotation was actually in that 2019 phase.”

The Liquidity Risk chart adds a second layer of confirmation. With liquidity risk currently sitting at 0.789 — firmly in the “Very Tight” zone — the conditions mirror those of the 2008 financial crisis and the 2018-2019 period almost precisely. Tight liquidity environments are not environments where investors chase speculative assets. They are environments where capital retreats to safety.

Liquidity Risk chart / Source: YouTube

The symmetry between 2019 and 2025 goes deeper still. In 2019, Bitcoin topped in June — two months before quantitative tightening ended in August. In 2025, Bitcoin topped in October — two months before quantitative tightening ended in December. Same pattern, same spacing, larger scale.

“What’s happening now is just a larger version of what happened in 2019. It just happens to all line up.”


What Comes Next for Benjamin Cowen

The 2019 parallel is not a perfect map, but it is the most honest one available. The four-year cycle remains intact — Bitcoin tops when it always tops, and it will bottom when it historically bottoms, approximately one year after the peak. That places the base case for a cycle low in October 2026.

What this cycle has revealed, more clearly than any before it, is that the crypto market does not exist in isolation. The business cycle, liquidity conditions, and investor risk appetite are not background noise — they are the environment in which every crypto decision plays out. In an early cycle, rising risk appetite carries altcoins higher.

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In a late cycle, retreating risk appetite leaves them behind.

Benjamin Cowen’s thesis is not a bearish call for its own sake. It is a framework for understanding why this cycle felt different — and why, for those who understood the macro context, it was never really a surprise.

The altcoin season didn’t fail. It was never going to arrive. Not in this environment. Not in this cycle.

The post Benjamin Cowen Reveals Why The Altcoin Season Never Came appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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Slash hits $1.4B as stablecoin payments move into boring B2B banking

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Crypto VC Funding Reaches $244M as Mesh Leads

Slash raised $100M at a $1.4B valuation as it processes over $1B in annualized stablecoin payments for 5,000+ businesses, turning crypto into back‑office banking rails.

Summary

  • Enterprise banking platform Slash has raised $100 million in a Series C round led by Ribbit Capital, lifting its valuation to about $1.4 billion and bringing total funding to more than $160 million.
  • The San Francisco‑based firm now serves over 5,000 corporate clients with a bundle that includes stablecoin payments, corporate and virtual accounts, expense management and real‑time payouts, and says annualized stablecoin volume has already crossed $1 billion less than a year after launch.
  • Slash plans to use the new capital to double down on its “bank account as financial command center” pitch, aiming squarely at the same treasury and payout rails that have drawn players like Ripple, which agreed to acquire stablecoin payments platform Rail for $200 million in 2025.

Slash Financial, a business banking platform built for online‑first companies, has secured $100 million in Series C funding at a roughly $1.4 billion valuation as stablecoin payments quietly become core B2B plumbing rather than a side experiment. The round was led by Ribbit Capital with participation from Khosla Ventures and Goodwater Capital, while existing backers New Enterprise Associates and Y Combinator joined for what Slash said is their fourth investment in the company.

In a company blog announcing the deal, Slash CEO Victor Cardenas wrote that the team is “building the world’s most powerful business banking platform,” positioning the product as a “financial command center” that lets companies manage bank accounts, cards, payouts and crypto rails from one dashboard. Slash says it now serves “more than 5,000” corporate clients ranging from startups to larger online merchants, offering features such as multi‑currency accounts, virtual cards, expense management and real‑time local payments.

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Stablecoins have become a centerpiece of that stack. Slash disclosed in March that businesses are already moving more than $1 billion in annualized stablecoin volume through the platform, just nine months after it switched on support for USDC and USDT, and set an ambitious goal of reaching $1 trillion in cumulative stablecoin payments before 2030. Its “stablecoin payments” product lets clients send and receive USDC and USDT directly from a Slash business account “with no crypto wallets, no exchange accounts, no need to hold funds in stablecoins,” effectively abstracting blockchain away in favor of a familiar treasury interface.

Slash’s latest round underscores a broader trend in which the value created by stablecoins migrates into rails for treasury, payouts and cross‑border settlement rather than consumer‑facing DeFi. As a recent crypto.news story on stablecoin infrastructure noted, fintechs increasingly lean on stablecoins to settle transactions faster while leaving end‑users in traditional cash balances, using intermediaries like Transak, Circle or banking partners to bridge the gap.

That logic is attracting big acquirers. In 2025, Ripple agreed to buy Toronto‑based stablecoin payments firm Rail for $200 million, arguing that “stablecoin payments are becoming the backbone of cross‑border treasury and merchant settlement” and promising corporate clients “pay‑ins and pay‑outs across key corridors without holding crypto on balance sheet.” More recently, layer‑2 project Morph partnered with custody firm Cobo to “supercharge institutional stablecoin flows” via a Payment Accelerator program, again targeting treasury desks and payroll teams rather than retail traders.

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Slash, which originally launched as a niche vertical banking product before pivoting into broader business banking, now finds itself competing with incumbents like Ramp and Brex as well as crypto‑native payment stacks that embed stablecoins beneath the surface. For investors like Ribbit and Khosla, the $100 million bet is that the dull work of wiring dollars and stablecoins through corporate back offices will capture more durable economics than speculative yield farming — and that platforms quietly pushing billions of dollars in USDC and USDT volume will own the next decade of crypto‑powered payments infrastructure.

In additionl, stablecoin payment rails includes an explainer on what infrastructure companies use to add stablecoin payments, a report on Morph’s institutional stablecoin flows with Cobo, and news of Ripple’s acquisition of stablecoin payment platform Rail for $200 million.

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Here’s why Morpho price rallied 12% today

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Here’s why Morpho price rallied 12% today

Morpho price rallied to nearly $2 for the first time this year as a wave of institutional interest and new protocol upgrades lifted demand for the token.

Summary

  • Morpho price jumped over 12% to a yearly high near $2, driven by rising institutional demand and protocol expansion.
  • Fireblocks integration opened access to 2,400+ institutional clients, creating a major liquidity pipeline into Morpho vaults.
  • New products like Morpho Midnight and growing RWA adoption, along with backing from Apollo and the Ethereum Foundation, boosted confidence.

According to data from crypto.news, Morpho (MORPHO) price climbed more than 12% to an intraday high of $1.94 on Friday before easing slightly to $1.93 at press time, marking its strongest level so far this year.

There are four key reasons behind the latest move.

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First, Morpho’s integration with Fireblocks has unlocked a fresh stream of institutional capital. The company rolled out its Earn product on April 15, giving over 2,400 clients the ability to allocate idle stablecoins into Morpho vaults. Given that Fireblocks processes more than $200 billion in monthly stablecoin volume, the tie-up creates a meaningful channel for liquidity to flow into the protocol.

Second, Morpho has widened its offering with the launch of Morpho Midnight, a lending system built around fixed rates and fixed durations. The product is geared toward traditional finance players who rely on predictable returns, which could help Morpho gain traction as backend infrastructure for credit markets.

Third, the project is making steady progress in the real-world asset space. The onboarding of Unified Labs as a risk curator for tokenized asset vaults signals its push into Asian markets. It also builds on earlier efforts to support loans backed by non-traditional collateral such as tokenized commodities, strengthening its presence in the RWA segment.

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Fourth, rising institutional backing has added further support to the rally. Apollo Global Management is in the process of acquiring up to 90 million MORPHO tokens over a four-year period, which accounts for roughly 9% of the total supply.

Alongside this, the Ethereum Foundation has deposited millions into Morpho vaults, pointing to growing confidence from major players within the crypto space.

Disclosure: This article does not represent investment advice. The content and materials featured on this page are for educational purposes only.

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Worldcoin Falls 13% as Iris Scanning Tech Reaches Zoom and DocuSign

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Crypto Breaking News

Worldcoin’s native token, WLD, slipped about 13.4% on Friday, trading near $0.28, as the iris-based identity project announced a fresh wave of integrations for its “proof of humanity” stack. World Network, led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is expanding the reach of its biometric verification infrastructure, which centers on the Orb device that scans a user’s iris to create a unique digital identity without exposing personal data.

The rollout coincides with a broader push to embed World ID into everyday tools. Zoom unveiled a Deep Face authentication integration to help prevent deepfakes during video calls, while electronic signatures platform Docusign is adding World ID verification to digital agreements. Tinder is expanding World ID verification to United States users, underscoring an interest in identity verification as AI-enabled interactions proliferate. World explained that as AI agents increasingly act on behalf of real people, the ability to prove a human stands behind each agent becomes critical.

CoinGecko data shows WLD at around $0.28 after Friday’s move, even as the broader crypto market rose about 2.2% on news that tensions between the United States and Iran were easing and regional trade channels such as the Strait of Hormuz were opening. World’s token acts as the economy’s incentive layer, used to reward users who verify their unique identity and to enable transactions within World Network’s ecosystem.

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World has positioned World ID as a portable, account-based system with features like key recovery and multi-device support, aiming to make verification resilient as AI agents gain prominence in digital workflows. The platform emphasizes that proof of humanity is not only a crypto-native concept but a cross-application requirement as AI agents begin to operate across consumer and enterprise spaces.

Key takeaways

  • WLD fell 13.4% to about $0.28 on Friday as World Network rolled out new integrations of its proof-of-human stack.
  • Major partnerships tie World ID to Zoom for anti-deepfake verification, Docusign for identity-backed digital signatures, and Tinder for US users, signaling a push toward enterprise- and consumer-facing identity verification.
  • The Orb-based system generates a human-verified identity without distributing biometric data, while offering account-based features like key recovery and multi-device support.
  • World’s ecosystem has grown beyond crypto-native use cases, with Coinbase and others leveraging World’s AgentKit—part of a broader toolkit for proving AI agents are linked to a verified identity; additional partners include AWS, Shopify, BrowserBase, Exa, and VanEck.
  • Market context suggests mixed signals: token volatility amid a rising broader market, influenced by geopolitical shifts and easing tensions rather than purely token-driven catalysts.

World ID moves into mainstream apps and business workflows

The latest wave of integrations highlights World Network’s ambition to embed a “proof of humanity” layer across everyday software—ranging from collaboration tools to legal workflows. Zoom’s Deep Face authentication aims to curb impersonation on video calls by tying real-user identity to AI-driven communication, addressing a growing concern about deepfakes in real-time conversations. Docusign’s addition of World ID verification could standardize how signers are validated in digital agreements, potentially reducing fraud in document workflows. Tinder’s US expansion signals a consumer-facing rollout that could influence how mainstream apps validate identities in online interactions.

World contends that as AI agents increasingly represent real people, a robust, privacy-preserving identity backbone becomes essential. The Orb device, which scans irises to generate a unique digital identity, is designed to minimize the amount of biometric data exposed while establishing that a real person stands behind each action or interaction. World emphasizes that its approach is account-based, with features intended to be portable across devices and recoverable should users lose access to credentials.

Privacy considerations and governance questions

As with any biometric-based verification framework, World’s approach invites scrutiny around data governance and privacy. Critics argue that centralizing identity verification—especially at scale—could raise surveillance concerns if control over the data ecosystem concentrates in a single company or platform family. Proponents, however, point to reduced risk of impersonation and fraud in AI-enabled contexts, arguing that verified human identity can unlock safer interactions and more trustworthy automated services.

Industry observers are watching how World balances privacy protections with the demand for verifiable identity across platforms. The emphasis on a non-identifying iris scan—where only a unique digital fingerprint is used for verification, not raw biometric data—remains a core feature cited by World, but real-world adoption will test whether users and partners trust the model enough to integrate at scale across consumer and enterprise channels.

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Developer tools and ecosystem expansion

Beyond consumer and enterprise integrations, World has been building a broader ecosystem around its identity layer. In March, Coinbase announced a collaboration to verify AI agents using World’s AgentKit, a developer toolkit designed to help agents prove a link to a verified identity as part of its x402 AI agents micropayments protocol. The move aligns with World’s broader aim to extend its proof-of-human infrastructure into AI-assisted workflows, enterprise applications, and developer platforms.

World has already linked its technology with a range of partners, including Amazon Web Services, Shopify, Browserbase, Exa, VanEck, and Coinbase. The expansion into mainstream software ecosystems signals a shift from a niche crypto project toward a cross-industry identity substrate that could underpin trusted AI-mediated interactions, digital signatures, and automated processes in a privacy-conscious manner.

As World Network continues to push World ID into both consumer apps and business tools, investors and users should watch for how privacy safeguards evolve, how regulators respond to biometric verification standards, and whether broader adoption translates into tangible utility and network effects for World’s token economy. The next milestones to watch include further platform rollouts, refinements to key recovery and multi-device support, and the integration of World ID into additional enterprise and consumer services.

Readers should monitor upcoming updates from World Network and partner platforms to gauge how quickly verification can scale without compromising user privacy or control over data. With the AI era accelerating the need for reliable ways to prove human presence, the trajectory of World ID’s integrations could influence both the pace of adoption and regulatory discourse in identity verification across digital ecosystems.

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Risk & affiliate notice: Crypto assets are volatile and capital is at risk. This article may contain affiliate links. Read full disclosure

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TRM Labs Unveils Advanced System Tackling Blockchain Reorg Chaos Across EVM Networks

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Brian Armstrong's Bold Prediction: AI Agents Will Soon Dominate Global Financial

TLDR:

  • Blockchain reorgs can shift transaction positions, alter timestamps, and change execution outcomes across EVM networks
  • TRM processes real-time data without waiting for finality, requiring advanced systems to detect and correct inconsistencies
  • Simple deduplication fails as reorgs modify indices and traces, creating structurally different yet related records
  • TRM uses layered detection and reconciliation, anchoring all datasets to canonical transaction timestamps for accuracy

Blockchain reorganizations continue to challenge data reliability across Ethereum-compatible networks. A recent post by TRM Labs explains how these events can alter transaction records, forcing engineering teams to rethink how real-time blockchain data is processed and maintained.

Reorgs Reshape Blockchain Data Beyond Simple Duplication

TRM Labs shared the update through its official X account, pointing readers to a detailed breakdown of its internal systems.

The post explains that blockchain reorgs do more than create duplicate entries. They can shift transaction positions, modify log indices, and even alter execution outcomes.

A reorg occurs when a blockchain replaces recently accepted blocks with a different version of the chain. This can happen under both proof-of-work and proof-of-stake systems. In Ethereum’s current structure, delays in block propagation or network partitions can trigger such changes.

As a result, previously ingested data may become outdated without warning. Transactions might move to different blocks, while timestamps and execution paths can change. In some cases, a transaction that succeeded earlier may fail in the updated chain version.

This creates challenges for data pipelines that process blockchain activity in real time. Once incorrect data enters storage systems, it remains alongside updated records. This leads to inconsistencies that extend across dependent datasets.

TRM notes that relying only on transaction hashes for deduplication does not solve the issue. When positions shift, metadata such as log indices and trace identifiers also change. These differences cause systems to treat identical transactions as separate records.

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Multi-Layered Strategy Enables Real-Time Data Accuracy

To manage these issues, TRM Labs built a layered system that detects and corrects reorg-related inconsistencies. The company processes blockchain data immediately after block production instead of waiting for finality. This approach supports real-time monitoring needs but requires constant reconciliation.

Waiting for finality could prevent most reorg issues. However, finality on Ethereum can take up to 15 minutes. For compliance and risk monitoring systems, such delays are not practical.

TRM’s system begins with reorg detection. Once identified, affected data is republished and corrected across all downstream tables. Each dataset applies its own deduplication rules, ensuring that outdated records are removed or replaced.

Another key component is cross-table reconciliation. Since reorgs can affect multiple datasets differently, consistency must be restored across all related tables. Without this step, mismatched records could disrupt analytics and reporting systems.

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The transactions table plays a central role in this process. It serves as the main reference point for all other datasets. By anchoring downstream data to canonical transaction timestamps, the system restores alignment after a reorg occurs.

The post also outlines different failure scenarios observed in production. In some cases, transactions retain the same outputs but shift positions. In others, execution paths change due to differences in blockchain state, leading to altered results.

There are also situations where the number of token transfers changes between chain versions. These variations create mismatches that cannot be resolved through simple deduplication methods.

TRM’s approach addresses each of these scenarios through coordinated data correction. This ensures that real-time systems maintain accuracy even when the underlying blockchain structure changes.

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The company continues to refine its systems as blockchain networks evolve. Its framework reflects the growing need for reliable data infrastructure in environments where consensus can shift after initial confirmation.

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Tokenization Doesn’t Fix Illiquid Assets: PBW 2026

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Paris, Data, RWA, RWA Tokenization, Paris Blockchain Week

Tokenization does not automatically make hard-to-trade assets liquid, industry executives said at Paris Blockchain Week, pushing back on the idea that putting private credit, real estate or other illiquid products onchain will by itself create active secondary markets.

Speaking during a panel moderated by Cointelegraph CEO Yana Prikhodchenko, Oya Celiktemur, Ondo Finance sales director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), said there is still a misconception that tokenizing illiquid assets can make them easier to trade.

“I think there’s still this idea that tokenizing something illiquid will somehow magically make it a liquid asset, which is just not true,” said Celiktemur. She added that assets like real estate and private credit “were never that liquid” to begin with.

Francesco Ranieri Fabracci, head of tokenization expansion at Tether, made a similar point. “It’s not that if you put an asset onchain, it will be liquid,” he said, arguing that only a narrower set of instruments, including bonds, money market funds and stablecoins, are likely to achieve consistent liquidity in tokenized markets.

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The discussion comes as the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) sector continues to expand, shifting attention from issuance growth toward whether tokenized products can achieve meaningful activity and move beyond limited distribution channels. 

Paris, Data, RWA, RWA Tokenization, Paris Blockchain Week
Panel discussion on Real-World Asset liquidity in Paris. Source: Cointelegraph

Tokenized RWA market grows, but remains concentrated

Data from RWA anayltics platform RWA.xyz shows the tokenized RWA market expanded from $8.8 billion on April 16, 2025, to roughly $29.9 billion on April 16, 2026, more than tripling in size in one year. 

The growth was led by relatively standardized and widely traded assets. Tokenized US Treasury Debt and commodities accounted for a large share of the market throughout the year. 

Related: French minister says new measures are coming after crypto kidnappings

By contrast, categories typically associated with lower liquidity remained comparatively smaller despite strong percentage growth. Tokenized real estate increased from about $35 million to $296 million, while private equity rose from nearly $60 million to $223 million.  

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Real-world asset data excluding stablecoins. Source: RWA.xyz

Other segments, including asset-backed credit and corporate credit, also expanded sharply in absolute terms, indicating rising issuance across a broader range of instruments.

But market value alone does not prove liquidity. Outstanding value can rise because more assets are issued, even if secondary market trading remains thin.

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