Traditional Assets Surpass Crypto in On-Chain Growth, Study Reveals

A recent study by CoinShares and Token Terminal found that traditional assets such as Treasuries, gold, and the S&P 500 are growing fastest on-chain. The research report, titled 'The Growth of Hybrid Finance,' showed that deposits of tokenized real-world assets increased from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026.

During this period, overall decentralized finance (DeFi) deposits fell by about 15%. The study also found that on-chain activity is increasingly concentrated in traditional assets such as Treasuries, multi-strategy funds, private credit, gold, oil, precious metals, equity indexes like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, and technology and semiconductor stocks.

The report's findings support CoinShares' Hybrid Finance thesis that regulated traditional assets and blockchain settlement are converging rather than operating as rival systems. The study also found that tokenized real-world assets grew while broader venues contracted across collateral, spot trading, and perpetual futures.