Crypto Exchanges Dominate Traditional Asset Trading with Staggering Growth
Crypto exchanges are rapidly expanding into traditional asset classes, and their growth is driven by user demand. According to CoinGecko's report, the market for actively-traded crypto TradFi assets scaled from $1.41B in January 2025 to $6.59B by June 30, 2026.
The market's growth has been relatively front-loaded, with precious metals dominating the total and tracking gold's run to its early 2026 record. However, as interest in precious metals waned slightly and US stocks were added to the pack, the flat first half of 2026 masked a real rotation underneath.
The growth in crypto TradFi trading volume is staggering, reaching $1.45T in the first half of 2026 alone, or 10x the volume generated in 2025. Precious metals saw volume climb from $23.99 billion in October 2025 to $236.76 billion in March 2026 as gold ran to its all-time high price.
Total open interest (OI) across the six exchanges grew from $60 million on January 1, 2025 to a peak of $4.67 billion on June 30, 2026, representing a 77-fold rise that mostly occurred this year. US stocks' OI overtook precious metals on June 18, 2026 and ended the period as the largest asset class at $2.01 billion (43.1% of the total).