RWA Tokenization Shifts Focus from Issuance to Utilization

The tokenization of real-world assets is expanding beyond just how much capital can be brought on-chain, according to Binance Research. The focus has shifted towards what holders can do with those assets after issuance.

Total RWA (Real-World Asset) assets under management reached $34.18 billion, up 85.2% year-to-date through September 15, 2026. Bond and money-market funds remained the largest category at $18.29 billion, while equities recorded the fastest growth, rising 390.4% YTD.

Binance Research describes this shift as the 'RWA Activation Era', where a growing range of tokenized assets become usable across lending, exchanges, and collateral markets. The report uses two measures to track this development: the Programmable Asset Ratio (PAR), which measures tokenized assets against their underlying markets, and the Capital Activation Rate (CAR), which measures how much of the tokenized asset base is deployed in verified on-chain financial applications.

Tokenization remains a small part of underlying markets. The principal asset categories addressable by tokenization exceed $300 trillion globally, while more than $34 billion is currently on-chain. This translates into an overall PAR of approximately 0.01%.