RWA Perpetual Futures Volume Hits Record $18.8 Billion

Real-world asset (RWA) perpetual futures have seen significant growth in daily volume over the past year, reaching $18.8 billion during September 3-9. This represents an expansion of their share of derivatives trading and a notable increase from January's volumes under $1 billion per day.

RWAs accounted for 18.5% of futures volume across tracked venues, with markets on Hyperliquid and Binance showing even higher percentages at 28% and 24.8%, respectively. The growth in RWA derivatives trading has not come at the expense of other crypto-perpetuals, however, as total futures activity remained relatively flat during this period.

A recent analysis by Hyperliquid found that wallets first entering the market through RWAs generated $111.6 billion in new-user trading volume between January 1 and June 30. This represents a significant share of new users at 31.7%, with RWA-first wallets also responsible for $93.2 billion, or 83.6%, of their total volume.

The same analysis found that most traders remained concentrated in the market category where they began, with around 80.9% of RWA-first wallets not trading in opposite markets during the period.