A round of RWA bull market is quietly happening

Written by: Joe Zhou, Foresight News

The development speed of RWA may be faster than we initially expected.

In just half a year, the RWA (broadly defined) related trading volume on platforms like Hyperliquid and Bitget has shown a significant exponential growth trend.

An industry insider pointed out: Within a year, RWA business could grow by 100 times, potentially recreating the miracle of the stablecoin (USDT) market size increasing a hundredfold in a year in 2017.

This may not be fanciful. According to statistics, by December 2025, the daily trading volume of Hyperliquid's RWA, which had been online for less than two months, stabilized at around 100 million dollars. By March 2026, the daily trading volume had stabilized at 1 billion dollars, and by April, it reached a peak of 5 billion dollars.

From 100 million to 1 billion dollars (daily average trading volume), Hyperliquid's RWA only took 90 days.

At the same time, its business structure is also undergoing significant changes. According to data from the first quarter of 2026, the RWA (broadly defined) trading volume on the Hyperliquid platform accounted for nearly 30%, beginning to substantively impact the overall trading structure.

A similar trend is also observed on the centralized exchange Bitget.

According to its disclosed data for the first quarter of 2026, "non-crypto assets" related trading (including derivatives like gold, crude oil, etc.) accounted for nearly 30% of the total trading volume, further rising to about 40% by the end of the quarter.

On March 20 alone, due to a significant drop in gold prices, Bitget's "RWA" related trading volume exceeded 6 billion dollars in a single day, setting a historical high for the platform. This figure further validates that the RWA business is gradually evolving into a core business module of exchanges.

Statistics show that on the two crypto platforms Hyperliquid and Bitget, assets like crude oil, gold, and silver are gradually becoming the main trading force, even at times surpassing mainstream crypto assets like ETH and Solana.

This may become an important indicator for the industry's shift.

Broad RWA and Narrow RWA

The author believes that the current RWA market can be divided into "narrow RWA" and "broad RWA".

Narrow RWA refers to the definition that is closer to traditional finance. It refers to mapping real assets from the real world (such as government bonds, stocks, bonds, real estate, commodities, etc.) onto the blockchain through tokenization, using real assets or compliant structures as the underlying support, thus achieving the expression and circulation of ownership, income rights, or cash flows on-chain. Currently, institutions like Ondo Finance and DigiFT are promoting this direction through compliant paths.

This type of RWA is characterized by its reliance on the traditional financial system and requires cooperation from banks, custodians, brokers, and other institutions. Whether it's a compliant exchange or a non-compliant trading platform, they are actively laying out this track. During the Web3 Carnival in Hong Kong in 2026, the author observed that several licensed institutions had already laid out RWA related businesses, with some platforms having launched RWA trading products aimed at professional investors, covering multiple asset types including stocks, gold, and corporate bonds.

Broad RWA, on the other hand, further extends this boundary, no longer limited to the tokenization of assets themselves, but includes anything related to real asset prices, such as perpetual contracts and CFDs on gold, crude oil, and stock indices, as well as various derivative trades.

Essentially, broad RWA emphasizes "price mapping and trading exposure of real assets," rather than ownership of assets themselves. Currently, platforms like Hyperliquid, Bitget, and Aster are at the forefront of this direction.

In the first quarter of 2026, the proportion of "broad RWA" related trading in some platforms has significantly increased, becoming an important component influencing the overall trading structure. Compared to half a year ago, market participation and liquidity in this area have shown significant growth.

Broad RWA and narrow RWA are not completely separate, but interact and evolve together at different levels: narrow RWA is responsible for building the on-chain mapping and institutional foundation for real assets, while broad RWA continues to expand the market's liquidity and depth of participation at the trading level, jointly promoting the expansion of the RWA ecosystem.

Structurally, RWA is diversifying into two paths: one is "asset onboarding," emphasizing compliance, custody, and real asset mapping; the other is "price onboarding," emphasizing trading efficiency, liquidity, and user demand.

The former is represented by Ondo Finance, while the latter is represented by Hyperliquid. The former is still steadily advancing the tokenization and compliance of underlying assets, while the latter has attracted a large influx of users and trading volume in a shorter time, becoming a more explosive form of expression in the current market.

However, these two paths are not antagonistic, but gradually converge and integrate under different market demand drivers.

RWA is experiencing explosive growth

This round of RWA explosion began in the second half of 2025. Multiple important nodes from several exchanges jointly drove the surge in actual trading volume of RWA.

On June 30, 2025, Robinhood launched tokenized trading of over 200 U.S. stocks and ETFs for European users for the first time, based on the Arbitrum blockchain. It also began offering tokenized exposure to "private companies" like OpenAI and SpaceX.

However, perhaps due to the excessive regulation of financial institutions, Robinhood was ahead of the curve but arrived late.

Robinhood did not fully unleash trading volume for RWA and was soon surpassed by Hyperliquid and Bitget, which took the lead.

In August 2025, Bitget officially launched RWA contracts; in September 2025, the launch of tokenized stock assets; in October 2025, Hyperliquid's HIP-3 (broad RWA capability) was officially launched; in January 2026, Hyperliquid's RWA Perp was officially launched.

Although both were slower than Robinhood's RWA strategy, they quickly caught up.

How rapid has the growth rate been for Hyperliquid and Bitget's RWA business?

In October 2025, Hyperliquid's HIP-3 (broad RWA platform) was just officially launched, and by December 2025, its RWA daily trading volume had stabilized at around 100 million dollars. By March 2026, the daily trading volume had stabilized at 1 billion dollars, and by April, it reached a peak of 5 billion dollars.

The exponential growth from 100 million dollars to 5 billion dollars took less than half a year.

In just a few months, it went from being a "new asset class" to being "close to dominating the market." This is not adoption but an instantaneous release of "trading demand."

In less than half a year, Hyperliquid's RWA has grown from 0 to nearly 50% of trading volume, and from 100 million dollars to 5 billion dollars, almost completing a reconstruction of the platform structure at "exponential speed."

Hyperliquid's RWA business has officially evolved from a fringe asset to a core trading source for the platform.

Bitget is similarly positioned.

In the first quarter of 2026, Bitget's non-crypto asset related trading (including derivatives like gold and crude oil) showed a significant growth trend, accounting for nearly 30%–40%. Compared to the beginning of the year, the weight of this portion of trading has significantly increased, starting to impact the overall trading structure.

On March 20, 2026, Bitget's RWA (broadly defined) related trading volume exceeded 6 billion dollars in a single day, setting a historical high for the platform.

This data sufficiently demonstrates the potential of its RWA business. According to public information, during the bull market, Bitget's total daily trading volume reached 15 billion to 20 billion dollars.

However, the two also show differences; for example, Hyperliquid performs excellently with crude oil as an asset, while Bitget shows better data performance with gold. An industry insider pointed out that this is also determined by the differences in product strategies and mechanisms of the two platforms.

RWA is splitting into three layers: asset layer, distribution layer, price layer. Ondo is focused on assets, Bitget is working on distribution and price, while Hyperliquid and Robinhood are focused on price. The market is voting for the "price layer" with trading volume, which is driving the explosive growth of exchanges like Hyperliquid. Meanwhile, the asset layer and distribution layer are growing steadily but relatively slowly.

In Conclusion

2017 was a key year for stablecoins. In this year, the market size of stablecoin USDT surged from tens of millions to the billion-dollar level, completing nearly a hundredfold growth. It is seen as an important node in the transition from tool to the establishment of cryptocurrency market infrastructure.

2026 may also be a very critical year for RWA. Hyperliquid is raising the daily trading volume related to RWA from 100 million dollars at the beginning of the year to the current stable figure of 1 billion dollars, even reaching a daily peak trading volume of 5 billion dollars.

And such growth only took a mere 90 days. Perhaps by the end of this year, we will see the daily trading volume of RWA related assets on Hyperliquid's single platform reach 10 billion dollars.

Looking at the leap from Hyperliquid's daily trading volume from 100 million dollars to 5 billion dollars and 10 billion dollars, this may be a key step for RWA to break through its original layers and truly move towards large-scale adoption.