ArkStream Capital: As Binance Becomes 'Stock Safe', Crypto is Undergoing an Unprecedented Transformation

Author: ArkStream

TL;DR

1. The repeated conflicts between the U.S. and Iran have driven oil prices higher, leading to increased inflation expectations, prompting the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates for the first time in 2023 in September.

2. Bitcoin has been moving in tandem with tech stocks represented by the Nasdaq, decoupling from gold, while oil prices and interest rates remain the main variables affecting Bitcoin.

3. In a challenging third quarter, Bitcoin rose by 42%, but the funds primarily flowed into Bitcoin through ETFs, and the meme bull market has vanished.

4. Transactions on the corporate chains of Robinhood and Circle are still dominated by memes, and the corporate chains have yet to introduce new asset classes.

5. This round of RWA bull market is mainly reflected in perpetual contracts for stocks and other RWAs, which is the main source of trading volume in the crypto industry in 2026.

6. Tokens with protocol revenue and continuous buybacks significantly outperformed other altcoins in the third quarter, and the sustainability of protocol revenue will become a more important selection criterion.

Introduction

In the third quarter of 2026, the Federal Reserve completed its first interest rate hike of 2023 with a unanimous vote of 12 to 0. The U.S. Senate voted 49 to 50 to reject the procedural motion for the CLARITY Act. Brent crude oil twice surpassed $100, closing at $108.50 on September 28; the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury bond rose to 5.25% on September 28, the highest since June 2007. However, despite the continuous negative news in the third quarter, the cryptocurrency market achieved significant gains. During the same period, Bitcoin rebounded from a 21-month low of about $57,800 in early July to $87,397 on September 21, an increase of about 51%, before retreating to around $83,000 on September 28; the cumulative net inflow of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF turned positive in September; the Nasdaq Composite Index closed at 27,122.09 points on September 21, marking a new closing high since June.

We will discuss this in three parts: how the U.S.-Iran conflict transmits to the financial markets through oil prices, inflation, and interest rates, and how stocks, gold, and Bitcoin perform in this context; the repair of the crypto market in the third quarter, and what assets are actually being traded on the corporate chains launched by Robinhood and Circle; and the path of Crypto's integration with RWA.

Macroeconomic Environment: From Oil Prices to Interest Rates

The changes in the macroeconomic environment this quarter can be viewed along a chain: the repeated escalation of the U.S.-Iran conflict → the rise in oil prices → gasoline prices pushing up inflation and inflation expectations → the Federal Reserve raising interest rates and Treasury yields rising → fluctuations in the prices of financial assets such as stocks, gold, and Bitcoin.

In July and September, the U.S.-Iran conflict escalated twice, with Brent crude oil rising from $73.74 at the end of June to $108.35 in mid-September; gasoline prices in August rose by 27.4% year-on-year, and the overall CPI increased by 0.4% month-on-month, with consumer inflation expectations for the next year rising to 4.6%; the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points in September, with 16 of the 19 officials (12 of whom have voting rights) predicting another hike this year; the yield on the 10-year Treasury bond rose to 5.25% on September 28, and the 30-year yield rose to 5.56% on September 29. Each time oil prices fell, stocks and Bitcoin rose; each time the conflict escalated, all three asset classes came under pressure. On September 21, oil prices fell below $100, and the Nasdaq index and Bitcoin both reached new highs on the same day; on September 26, Trump rejected Iran's proposal to reopen the Strait, and on September 28, oil prices returned to $108, with the Nasdaq, gold, and Bitcoin all declining. We will break down each link in this chain to see how the macro environment ultimately affects the financial markets and cryptocurrencies.

U.S.-Iran Conflict, Oil Prices, and Inflation

At the end of the second quarter, U.S.-Iran negotiations progressed, and tankers resumed passage through the Strait of Hormuz, with Brent crude oil closing at $73.74 on June 24, the lowest closing price since the conflict began on February 28. In the third quarter, the conflict escalated repeatedly, and oil prices surged accordingly.

Key points of Brent crude oil in the third quarter of 2026 (compiled by ArkStream)

The rise in oil prices was first reflected in gasoline prices. In August, U.S. gasoline prices rose by 3.9% month-on-month and 27.4% year-on-year, contributing to more than one-third of the overall CPI increase for that month; the energy component rose by 2.1% month-on-month.

Key components of U.S. CPI in August 2026 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compiled by ArkStream)

Employment data also brought a huge shock to the market: in August, non-farm payrolls increased by 162,000, while the market consensus expected only about 53,000, marking the strongest single-month performance since March, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4.1%, and approximately 7 million unemployed individuals.

As the non-farm data was released, inflation expectations had already been priced into the financial markets. The final value from the University of Michigan in September showed that consumers expected inflation to be 4.6% over the next year, the highest since June; inflation expectations for the next five years rose from 3.3% for three consecutive months to 3.4%. The consumer confidence index fell to 48.1, with respondents repeatedly mentioning rising fuel prices as a source of pressure. Inflation expectations in the bond market remained relatively stable, with the 10-year breakeven inflation rate at 2.33% in September, far below the peak of 3.02% in April 2022; households and bond investors showed a divergence in their inflation judgments.

Interest Rate Hikes and Expectations

After the release of inflation and employment data, the Federal Reserve completed its interest rate hike in September.

The Federal Reserve's views became clearer over three meetings. The July statement noted that economic activity was "expanding at a robust pace," and inflation "remained elevated relative to the 2% target," attributing the cause to supply shocks from energy; the minutes from the July meeting indicated that officials believed a rate hike would be necessary if inflation did not cool. The September decision statement read: "Inflation remains elevated, and today's policy action will support inflation returning to the 2% target more promptly." With the economy expanding, the unemployment rate around 4.1%, and inflation above target, the Federal Reserve ended its wait-and-see approach.

The Federal Reserve's outlook on future inflation is also not optimistic. The September economic forecast raised the 2026 PCE inflation from 3.6% to 3.7%, delaying the return of inflation to 2% until 2029; 16 officials expect at least one more rate hike this year, with 4 expecting two more, and most officials expect rates to remain above current levels by the end of 2027. Before the September meeting, the rate hike had been largely priced in by the market, and the market volatility following the decision mainly stemmed from this set of forecasts: a rate level above 4% may persist until 2027. The market is also following suit: on September 28, CME FedWatch showed a probability of about 94% for at least one more rate hike before the end of the year and about 70% for a rate hike in October.

ArkStream Capital believes that the September rate hike confirms our judgment from the second quarter: this round of inflation is mainly driven by supply factors such as oil prices, and rate hikes cannot reopen the Strait; the duration of high rates is likely to be prolonged.

Financial Markets: U.S. Stocks, Gold, and Bitcoin

The changes in interest rates and oil prices ultimately impacted the prices of three asset classes.

As of September 28, 2026, the drawdown of the Nasdaq, gold, and Bitcoin from their historical highs (compiled by ArkStream)

The performance of the three asset classes in September was not the same. Bitcoin and the Nasdaq both reached new highs on September 21, but both fell on September 28; gold weakened throughout September. The rise of the Nasdaq on September 21 was driven by chip and AI stocks: Meta rose about 11% that day, while AMD and Intel rose 8% to 11%, with AMD's market value reaching $1 trillion. On September 28, the S&P 500 index fell by 0.77% to 7,683.69 points, the Nasdaq fell by 0.92%, and the Dow Jones index fell by 0.67%, while Brent crude oil rose by about 4%. This has been a recurring phenomenon over the past year: Bitcoin's performance has decoupled from gold and has been more closely aligned with risk assets represented by the Nasdaq.

In terms of price, gold reached a historical high of $5,589 on January 28, 2026, while Bitcoin had already fallen from its peak in October 2025, dropping to about $57,800 in early July, with a maximum drawdown of about 54%. The rolling correlation coefficient between the two over the past year was -0.17, and it once dropped to -0.88 in the spring of this year; during the same period, the correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and U.S. stocks rose from -0.68 to +0.72 within two weeks. August was an exception: after the Treasury expanded buybacks, discussions about the depreciation of the dollar heated up, and Bitcoin and gold rose together for a time, with the 90-day correlation coefficient calculated by Grayscale rising from close to 0 to around 0.5, while the 90-day correlation coefficient between Bitcoin and the Nasdaq fell from about 0.6 to 0.33. Entering September, gold fell, and Bitcoin and the Nasdaq moved in sync again, separating once more. Historical data from Glassnode shows that such brief switches in correlation typically do not last long.

The decoupling of Bitcoin from gold and its alignment with the Nasdaq, according to ArkStream, can be attributed to four main reasons:

Different buyers. The most stable buyers of gold are central banks, which purchased 863.3 tons of gold in 2025, more than double the average level from 2010 to 2021; this buying pressure is insensitive to price. In the same year, net inflows into global gold ETFs reached a record $89 billion. Bitcoin lacks central bank buying, with new funds primarily coming from spot ETFs and institutional investors, with the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF having an asset size of about $108.4 billion, and its holders highly overlapping with tech stock investors.

Similar responses to interest rates. Both Bitcoin and growth tech stocks do not have stable cash dividends, and their valuations heavily depend on future expectations. When long-term interest rates rise, both are pressured, and when long-term interest rates fall, both benefit. On September 21, the Nasdaq and Bitcoin both reached new highs, with the main change that day being oil prices falling below $100 and Treasury yields retreating; on September 28, both fell, with the 10-year Treasury yield rising to a 19-year high.

Summary

The fluctuations in gold prices are driven by various factors. Gold does not generate interest, and rising interest rates along with a strengthening dollar can suppress gold prices. The direct reason for the decline in gold prices in late September was the rise in treasury yields to their highest level since 2007, coupled with the dollar nearing a two-month high. On the same day, silver dropped approximately 4.7% to $61.27. However, the medium- to long-term trend of gold is also influenced by central bank purchases and the allocation of foreign exchange reserves by various countries, factors that are unrelated to Bitcoin.

Higher leverage. The open interest in Bitcoin futures and perpetual contracts was around $61.5 billion in September. When prices fluctuate significantly, it can trigger a chain liquidation, amplifying the volatility, which is more akin to the high volatility seen in tech stocks, marking a significant difference from gold.

In summary, the macroeconomic landscape this quarter can be summarized in three points:

1. The US-Iran conflict has driven up oil prices, which in turn raises inflation expectations. The US-Iran conflict has escalated repeatedly, with Brent crude oil rising from $73.74 to over $108, and gasoline prices increasing by 27.4% year-on-year, leading consumer inflation expectations for the year to rise to 4.6%.

2. The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates and is preparing for further increases, with treasury yields reaching a 19-year high. The policy rate has risen to 3.75%–4.00%, and the market estimates a 94% probability of another rate hike before the end of the year; the 10-year treasury yield rose to 5.25% on September 28, the highest since June 2007.

3. Bitcoin is following the Nasdaq, decoupling from gold. Bitcoin and the Nasdaq both reached new interim highs on September 21 and dropped on September 28, while gold has declined by approximately 6.7% over the past month.

Crypto Market and Company Chain

Despite the increasing pressure on the macroeconomic front this quarter, the crypto market rebounded in the third quarter. We will explore the focus of the crypto industry through the performance of the crypto market, the capital flows reflected in exchange data, and the asset heat on the company chain launched by Robinhood and Circle.

Performance of the Crypto Market

In the first two quarters of 2026, the market remained in a bottoming and repairing phase, with low trading volumes and weak leverage sentiment. In August, market sentiment showed a clear turning point. From August 18 to 19, three positive developments occurred: First, US Treasury Secretary Yellen announced that the scale of long-term treasury buybacks would at least double, increasing the single operation from $2 billion to at least $4 billion, releasing liquidity expectations into the market; second, the SEC released a draft of "Regulation Crypto Assets," proposing to allow crypto issuers to be exempt from raising no more than $5 million over four years, or no more than $75 million per year, with disclosure requirements significantly lower than traditional securities issuance, opening the door for compliant issuance in the industry; third, Trump convened executives from Coinbase, Gemini, Ripple, Chainlink Labs, and other crypto industry leaders at the White House to push for the final sprint of the stalled CLARITY Act in the Senate (although the CLARITY Act was not passed subsequently). The combination of these three messages triggered a severe short squeeze: Bitcoin rose nearly 8% within two days, approaching $70,000; Ethereum surged 18% to 20% within two days, breaking through $2,250; and approximately $1.9 billion was liquidated within 24 hours, mostly from short positions.

This round of the "8·19 market" drove the repair for the entire quarter. Bitcoin rose 42% overall in the third quarter, closing at $83,161; due to the previous deep decline, it is still down about 5.13% year-to-date, with approximately a 34% gap from the historical high of $126,000, making the third quarter more of a corrective rebound.

However, we see that funds are still concentrated in Bitcoin. During the nearly 25% rise in Bitcoin in August, the altcoin season index fell from about 67 at the beginning of August to 39 by August 25 (the threshold for "altcoin season" is 75), while Bitcoin's market share remained around 60% (CoinMarketCap). The cumulative funds for the US Bitcoin spot ETF saw a net outflow of about $5.8 billion in mid-July, but turned back to net inflow by late September; the total market cap of stablecoins dropped from about $320.6 billion in May to $306.6 billion by September 24 (DefiLlama). New funds mainly entered Bitcoin through ETFs, and the on-chain dollars did not increase.

US Stocks and Crypto Asset Trading

In our second-quarter report, we stated that the moment of maximum impact on crypto has passed, and the market is slowly recovering. Continuing the statistical approach from the second quarter, we have updated the relevant data to the third quarter.

The major regional stock market free float market capitalization weighted index for the third quarter of 2026 (compiled by ArkStream)

The rhythm of the US stock market is highly consistent with Bitcoin: it bottomed in July, repaired from August to September, and reached a quarterly high in September. This aligns with our conclusion from the first part that Bitcoin's trend is closer to tech stocks represented by the Nasdaq.

Data from Binance and Hyperliquid also corroborate our judgment: after August, crypto trading began to warm up.

Monthly trading volume of crypto asset perpetual contracts (Binance, Hyperliquid, compiled by ArkStream)

In July, the monthly trading volume of Binance's USDT perpetual contracts fell to $1.17 trillion, and Hyperliquid's official crypto perpetual contracts dropped to $109.5 billion, both at their lowest for the year; in September, both rebounded to $1.61 trillion and $188.4 billion, respectively, with Binance's USDT perpetual contracts exceeding January levels. Binance's spot trading volume also rose from $193.7 billion to $306.6 billion during the same period.

This round of warming is more of a recovery from the July low. In the third quarter, Binance's USDT perpetual trading volume was $4.15 trillion, about 12% lower than the first quarter, while spot trading volume decreased by about 28%; Hyperliquid's official crypto perpetual trading volume was $456.2 billion, about 9% lower than the first quarter. During the same period, the incremental trading volume in the industry came from RWA perpetual contracts such as stocks, which we will elaborate on in the third part.

Robinhood Chain

Third Quarter Data

Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum Layer 2 led by Robinhood, launched its mainnet on July 1, 2026, and the third quarter was its first full operational quarter. The core product on the chain is stock tokens, aimed at users in over 120 countries outside the US, supporting 24/7 trading and can be used as collateral in lending pools.

As of September 30, the daily trading volume on Robinhood Chain's DEX was about $1.3 billion, with 394,000 active addresses; the single-day revenue on September 4 reached $8.27 million, the highest for the quarter.

TVL of Robinhood Chain protocol (Entropy Advisors)

According to statistics from Entropy Advisors, Robinhood Chain's TVL reached $1.12 billion by the end of September, taking three months. In comparison, Hyperliquid's HyperEVM launched in February 2025, taking about seven months to reach a TVL of $190 million to $200 million by early September of that year; Coinbase's Base chain launched in August 2023, taking about 13 months to exceed $2 billion in September 2024.

Composition of on-chain assets in Robinhood Chain (Entropy Advisors)

The total scale of on-chain assets reached $4.21 billion by the end of September. The rapid growth at the beginning of September mainly came from meme tokens and protocol tokens; the absolute scale of stablecoins also expanded, but their proportion was significantly diluted; the scale of RWA and yield-bearing stablecoins (YBS) increased slowly, with growth rates far below those of meme tokens and protocol tokens. This phase coincided with the trading and minting boom of the token issuance platform Pons, which has accumulated platform transactions of about $4.5 billion.

On-chain Assets

Assets with higher market values are primarily meme tokens and tokens from issuance platforms.

On September 29, the total market value of meme tokens on Robinhood Chain was about $871 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of about $146 million; the platform token PONS from the issuance platform Pons rose from $20 million to over $200 million in market value in August. The highest market value AI and the fourth BONER both use stock tokens as trading pairs: the former is priced in tokenized Nvidia stocks, while the latter holds over half of the tokenized HIMS stocks; another meme token, A Meme Coin, uses tokenized AMC stocks as trading pairs, borrowing the narrative of "meme stocks" from 2021.

The issuance platform is the highest revenue-generating application on-chain. Pons issued about 25,000 new tokens in a single day on September 2, accumulating fee revenue of $174.6 million; for the week ending September 24, Pons' fee revenue was about $19.5 million, down from $35 million the previous week.

The trading volume of stock tokens has grown rapidly, but is intertwined with meme trading. According to CoinDesk Research, in September, the trading volume of tokenized stocks on Robinhood reached $6.57 billion, a month-on-month increase of 407%, accounting for 42.0% of the entire market, making it the largest trading venue for tokenized stocks. According to Token Terminal, the DEX trading volume of stock tokens on Robinhood Chain was $10.4 billion over the 30 days ending September 23, accounting for about 19% of the total DEX trading volume during the same period, while this ratio was about 8.7% in the first two months after launch. The most traded stock token was Nvidia, with a cumulative trading volume of about $2.1 billion, while trading of tokenized stocks for Apple, GameStop, and SpaceX was also quite active. This statistical approach does not exclude the trading pairs between meme tokens and stock tokens, and some meme trades priced in stock tokens, like AI and BONER, are also counted in the trading volume of stock tokens.

The lock-up data shows a contrasting direction. According to DefiLlama, the on-chain tokenized assets are about $125 million (about $32 million by a narrower measure), accounting for only about 6% of the TVL, while this proportion was close to one-third at the beginning of launch. Among the approximately $640 million in on-chain stablecoins, USDG accounts for 54.8%, while USDe has grown by 167% within a month.

Circle and Arc

Circle's Arc blockchain launched its mainnet on September 16. Its design points almost entirely towards institutions: all 11 founding validators come from traditional finance and payment industries, including BlackRock, DTCC, Intercontinental Exchange, Visa, Mastercard, Standard Chartered, MoneyGram, SBI, Sumitomo Corporation, Global Payments, and Galaxy; transaction fees are paid in USDC; settlements are completed in under a second. In May, Circle completed a presale of ARC tokens at a valuation of $3 billion, raising $222 million, led by a16z, with participation from BlackRock, Apollo, and others.

Funding is concentrated in lending protocols and USDC transfers. Of the $385 million in total value locked (TVL), over 90% is stored in the two lending protocols, Morpho and Aave; stablecoin transfers are currently the main activity on the chain.

Although Circle hopes to further expand its institutional business through Arc, the trading end on Arc still primarily consists of meme tokens. On September 19, the top five tokens by 24-hour trading volume on Arc were: the issuing platform token ARGUS ($4.24 million), meme token BCAT ($4.11 million), a community meme token borrowing the USDC name ($1.79 million), the issuing platform token TOLLY ($930,000), and meme token DUKE ($840,000). Among the five most actively traded tokens on an institutional blockchain designed around USDC, three are meme tokens. Among the first batch of ecological projects announced by Arc, the foreign exchange trading venue Hibachi is the only one with a direction that significantly differs from existing blockchain asset categories, and there is currently no public trading data available.

ArkStream believes that the company chain has not yet brought about a new asset class. The tokens with the highest market capitalization on the Robinhood Chain are primarily meme and issuing platform tokens, with a considerable portion of stock tokens traded in the form of meme pairs; Arc's funding is concentrated in USDC lending, and trading is focused on meme and issuing platform tokens. If gas subsidies and trading incentives decline, and on-chain trading continues to be dominated by memes, the true value of the company chain remains to be further tested.

The Path of Crypto's RWA Integration

Characteristics of Previous Bull Markets

Before defining the current RWA bull market, we would like to review previous bull markets.

The 2017-2018 ICO bull market was the first true wealth creation movement for the masses in Crypto history: project teams raised funds by issuing tokens, with retail investors as the absolute main participants, and the core narrative was "decentralized disruptive innovation," with almost no barriers to entry and no regulatory constraints. Many projects during this bull market were using blockchain as a hammer to find nails, making "blockchain +" PPT innovations across various fields. Compared to the later 2020-2021 cycle, the infrastructure during this period was still immature, and many projects had not yet reached the stage of being falsified. Looking back, a considerable portion of the projects at that time were scams.

The 2020-2021 DeFi + NFT bull market occurred against the backdrop of global loose monetary policies. The on-chain circulation scale of stablecoins like USDT and USDC exploded, becoming the core pipeline connecting the traditional dollar system with the on-chain world. After the infrastructure matured, DeFi began to run smoothly, with AMM as an innovative liquidity model greatly stimulating wealth effects, and liquidity mining's flywheel driving prices to rise rapidly. People began to believe in "blockchain +" again, and various innovative attempts in Crypto reached their peak. Similarly, due to the maturity of the infrastructure, various narratives began to face real tests; tokenization and airdrop incentives extended the testing cycle, but most narratives were gradually falsified in the subsequent bear market, with the metaverse being the most typical example.

Excluding early memes like DOGE, the vast majority of memes can be traced back to the DeFi Summer period's SUSHI. Early memes were not pure; they belonged to "meme-type DeFi," which used humor to enhance the community dissemination of DeFi projects, and their operational methods still followed conventional projects, leading to a surge of animal, plant, and food-themed meme-type DeFi. By the late bull market, the falsification of narratives resonated with the climax of memes: crypto players discovered that most narratives were merely packaging used by project teams to harvest, and memes, which appeared to be fairly distributed, gained market recognition. SHIB is the most iconic token among them; its approach is completely opposite to previous meme-type DeFi, first creating a meme and then using DeFi and blockchain narratives to meet landing demands and sell pressure. Since SHIB, more and more meme projects have adopted a purely meme approach. The basic language of memes in the post-DeFi era includes: fair issuance, community identity, anti-VC narratives, celebrity catalysis, ultra-low unit prices, and social media-driven reflexivity.

The hallmark of the 2024-2025 ETF/Meme bull market is a fundamental shift in the way funds enter the market. Spot ETFs are compliant funding channels dominated by traditional asset management giants like BlackRock IBIT, regulated by the SEC; DAT, represented by Strategy, indirectly holds Bitcoin and other crypto assets through publicly traded company stocks. In this bull market, we did not see the so-called altcoin bull market. Bitcoin attracted a large amount of institutional funds, but these funds did not automatically rotate into altcoins, and the altcoin market lost its characteristic of widespread rises, turning into a small hotspot market: funds rapidly gathered, created wealth, and faded in new small hotspots, with each hotspot's average cycle not exceeding three months. In the 2020-2021 bull market, funds flowed out in the order of BTC, ETH, large-cap altcoins, and various sector altcoins; in the 2024-2025 bull market, the altcoin trend became meme rises followed by AI rises, and vice versa, with most AI projects at that time also being AI-type memes.

During the falsification process of the 2023 bear market, altcoins entered the post-narrative era, with crypto players no longer believing in narratives and fully embracing memes. By the end of 2023, BONK and WIF initiated a meme trend on Solana. Unlike the previous cycle's SHIB, WIF had almost no complex vision or traditional roadmap; it proved that a meme relying purely on images, language, community consensus, and liquidity could also form large-scale assets on Solana. This marked the transition of Solana's meme market from "ecological community coins" to the "attention asset" stage.

Pump.fun pushed the narrative of memes to its peak and marked the complete end of the narrative cycle in Crypto. Our judgment is that the once fervent Solana meme bull market may not be replicated, although the third quarter saw a small surge in meme stocks on the Robinhood chain. The main reason is that Pump.fun has industrialized the meme issuance process, with meme supply far exceeding retail liquidity. The collapse of the perception of "meme fair distribution" will have a confidence impact on the market that is not smaller than the collapse of confidence in VC coins back in the day. A similar situation occurred during the NFT bull market: Blur provided ample liquidity for NFTs, which became the outlet for concentrated NFT sell-offs.

Low Market Cap Altcoins/BTC Exchange Rate (TradingView)

But now, the meme bull market is gone for good. The exchange rate of low market cap altcoins against Bitcoin also confirms this: the gains in this round are primarily concentrated on Bitcoin. In 2024 and 2025, the net inflow of US Bitcoin spot ETFs is projected to be $35.2 billion and $21.4 billion respectively (CoinDesk), with new funds primarily entering Bitcoin through ETFs, without spreading to low market cap altcoins; the second part of the data shows that the recovery in the third quarter of 2026 is also concentrated on Bitcoin.

At this current time window, we cannot yet define the true hallmark of the Crypto RWA bull market, but 2026 is undoubtedly the RWA year for Crypto. If we had to define this bull market with one word, the most fitting would be "integration." In the past, Crypto played the role of a global financial innovation testing ground; now it is integrating into real life, becoming a part of real life: on one hand, there is the global expansion of stablecoins, and on the other, the tokenization and liquidity transformation of stocks.

The common feature of the first three bull markets (ICO, DeFi/NFT, ETF/DAT) is "one-way penetration," where funds or narratives primarily radiate from the Crypto native world to attract the attention and incremental funds of the traditional world. The current wave centered around RWA has the most significant characteristic of "two-way engagement": on one side, leading centralized exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken actively extend outward, bringing traditional assets like stocks, commodities, and indices onto the chain; on the other side, internet brokerages like Robinhood are entering in reverse, building their own public chains and issuing tokens, migrating the foundation of their securities brokerage business onto the chain.

Exchanges and RWA Perpetual Contracts

The most direct manifestation of this RWA bull market is the trading volume of RWA perpetual contracts on Binance and Hyperliquid, which is the main trading increment in the crypto industry for 2026.

Monthly Trading Volume of RWA Perpetual Contracts (Binance, Hyperliquid, ArkStream Compilation)

The monthly trading volume of Binance RWA Perps increased from $410 million in January to $216.9 billion in July, while trade.xyz under the HIP-3 framework on Hyperliquid reached $114.1 billion in July, both being the highest of the year. After August, both fell back, with September figures at $142 billion and $59.3 billion respectively, still significantly higher than the second quarter. In the third quarter, Binance RWA Perps traded $547.7 billion, more than four times that of the second quarter, accounting for 11.7% of its total perpetual contract trading, while this ratio was less than 0.1% in the first quarter.

Hyperliquid Stock Perpetual Trading Volume and HIP-3 Builder Trading Proportion (Hyperliquid, ArkStream Compilation)

On Hyperliquid, the trading volume of HIP-3 Builder increased from $132.4 billion in Q1 to $261.2 billion in Q3, with stock perpetuals rising from $16.5 billion to $94.6 billion. Monthly, the trading volume share of HIP-3 Builder reached 51.1% in July, then fell to 24.4% in September, while the monthly trading volume of stock perpetuals dropped from $42.1 billion in July to $20.3 billion in September. During the same period, both Binance and Hyperliquid saw their crypto asset perpetual trading volumes fall below Q1 levels, with the industry's trading growth almost entirely coming from RWA perpetual contracts (according to Binance and Hyperliquid's official API).

Looking at the entire industry, according to CryptoRank, the total trading volume of RWA perpetual DEX in Q3 reached $365 billion, a 32% increase quarter-on-quarter, with stock assets contributing $175 billion, accounting for about 48%. According to CoinDesk Research, the RWA-related trading volume processed by crypto exchanges in the first half of 2026 is close to $1 trillion, with Binance alone accounting for 60.9% of the market share. Commodities perpetuals such as gold, silver, and crude oil, as well as Pre-IPO contracts like SpaceX, have become new sources of trading for exchanges.

Exchanges are accelerating their transformation from mere crypto asset matching platforms to comprehensive financial infrastructures where "everything can be traded." Coinbase has partnered with Yahoo Finance to bridge crypto assets with traditional stock markets, advancing the vision of an "Everything Exchange"; Kraken has launched regulated tokenized stock perpetual contracts based on the xStocks framework, offering up to 20x leverage for non-U.S. users with 24/7 trading; Binance has introduced tokenized asset exposure through Binance Alpha, reflecting this shift. Binance's Q3 listing data also illustrates this point, indicating that Binance has effectively transformed into a "stock exchange."

In Q3, Binance added a total of 134 trading varieties, including 86 TradFi perpetual contracts, 37 spot stocks and ETFs, while the total number of new crypto asset spot coins and perpetual contracts was only 11.

Tokenized Stocks and On-chain RWA

According to Binance Research, as of September 15, the on-chain RWA scale reached $34.18 billion, an 85.2% increase year-to-date; among them, U.S. Treasuries and money market funds accounted for $18.29 billion, contributing 54.7% of the year's growth, while tokenized stocks reached $4.43 billion, growing 390.4% year-to-date, with their share in RWA rising from 4.9% at the beginning of the year to 13.0%. Private credit is the fastest-growing non-sovereign category, with alternative assets like gold, commodities, corporate and government bonds, real estate, shipping finance, and renewable energy also accelerating on-chain. Established financial institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, JPMorgan, and Apollo, along with tokenization platforms like Securitize, InvestaX, and IXS, form the main supply force on the institutional side of this RWA wave. DTCC has partnered with about 40 institutions to complete production environment real trading tests for tokenized securities, ETFs, and Treasuries, planning full commercialization in October; the participants in Singapore's "Project Guardian" have also expanded to over 40 institutions.

Tokenized stocks are the fastest-growing category. According to CoinDesk Research, the market capitalization of tokenized stocks reached $4.87 billion in September, with a trading volume of $15.6 billion that month, both hitting historical highs. The transfer volume of on-chain tokenized stocks peaked in July and then fell back, but in August and September, it remained significantly higher than levels before June, with the number of holding addresses reaching 4.26 million.

On the brokerage side, Robinhood is the most notable case this quarter. In September, Robinhood became the largest trading venue for tokenized stocks, accounting for 42.0% of the total market trading volume; however, as mentioned in the second part, the assets listed on Robinhood Chain are still primarily meme and token platform tokens, with stock tokens only making up about 6% of the locked assets. Robinhood's advantage on the path of integration lies more in its coverage of 38 countries and over 28 million customers.

Industry observers summarize this phenomenon as "the boundaries between digital assets and traditional assets are dissolving from both directions": crypto exchanges are striving to resemble traditional exchanges, while traditional brokerages are working to become more like crypto exchanges. In terms of trading growth, exchanges are currently leading, with stock and other RWA perpetual contracts contributing the most significant growth; the on-chain stock tokens on the brokerage side are still in the early stages.

Integration of Users and Technology

Whether it's Binance or Robinhood, the goal in this historical window of "integration" is consistent: to become a gateway for global, multi-variety investments. This integration is not only happening in trading varieties.

User integration. By the end of 2025, the number of global crypto asset holders is estimated to be around 720 million to 740 million, accounting for about 9% of the global population. However, holding does not equal usage: the deduplicated active crypto users are around 40 million to 70 million, only about 6% to 10% of the holders. Crypto has achieved substantial coverage of asset holders, but there is still a significant gap from becoming a frequently used financial infrastructure.

Technological integration. In 2025, Stripe and Shopify announced that millions of merchants in 34 countries would accept USDC payments: consumers pay with on-chain USDC, and merchants receive local fiat directly, with funds entering bank accounts like ordinary card income, without needing to manage wallets, gas fees, or stablecoin exchanges. Polymarket is another path for crypto to enter the real world. It retains the visibility of blockchain, utilizing stablecoin settlement, public positions, and smart contract custody to create a real-time probability market that did not previously exist between traditional media and betting platforms. Its breakthrough lies in enabling political observers, traders, journalists, and the general public to start viewing on-chain prices as information sources, making whether outside users purchase crypto assets secondary.

In the past, when people talked about crypto, they thought of crypto punks, speculative markets, fringe markets, and financial testing grounds. With the advancement of RWA, crypto is becoming a part of real life and gaining nourishment for growth within it.

Market Performance of Buyback Tokens

As the incremental funds in the market are increasingly attracted by RWA, tokenized stocks, stablecoins, and other "TradFi-like" assets, how pure crypto-native tokens prove their ability to retain funds is becoming a core test for every crypto project in this cycle. Buyback tokens, which use a portion of protocol revenue to repurchase and burn or redistribute their own tokens in the secondary market, such as Hyperliquid's HYPE and Pump.fun's PUMP, serve as a benchmark for the market to test "whether the protocol can generate real cash flow and whether it can feed back token value," echoing the logic emphasized by RWA assets of "cash flow and yield verifiability."

ArkStream has compiled the performance of projects on Binance, focusing primarily on spot trading with contracts as a supplement. Overall in Q3, the average increase of 33 buyback tokens was 78.6%, Bitcoin rose by 42.6%, the average increase of 8 large-cap altcoins was 69.2%, and the average increase of 544 small-cap altcoins was 58.8%; from August 19, when Bitcoin truly strengthened until the end of the quarter, the buyback group increased by an average of 71.6%, Bitcoin rose by 29.2%, large altcoins increased by 55.4%, and small altcoins increased by 41.4%. Whether looking at the entire quarter or from August 19 onwards, the performance of buyback tokens has outperformed other altcoins. There is also a phenomenon in this data: large altcoins have greater elasticity than Bitcoin, while the overall performance of small altcoins is not as good as that of large altcoins. Although the average increase of small altcoins is higher than that of Bitcoin, this is a rebound based on a deeper previous decline, and the exchange rate of small-cap altcoins against Bitcoin remains at a multi-year low. This also confirms our view: the vast majority of altcoins, if not supported by buybacks to capture token value, will not attract market attention like memes and will gradually wither in subsequent markets.

For crypto projects, this is the real test posed by the current RWA bull market. Assets like RWA and tokenized stocks, with clear underlying cash flows and high regulatory recognition, continue to attract incremental funds. If crypto-native projects cannot prove their sustainable and verifiable protocol revenue and value capture mechanisms, whether through buybacks, dividends, or other forms, they are likely to be marginalized in the next round of capital reallocation; a few leading protocols with cash flow generation capabilities that are willing to pass value to token holders through mechanisms like buybacks, such as Hyperliquid, are expected to stand out in the reconstruction of the "RWA-like" valuation system, becoming a bridge connecting crypto-native narratives with traditional financial valuation logic. ArkStream believes that in the coming quarters, "the sustainability of protocol revenue and buybacks" will replace simple TVL or trading volume as a more important indicator for measuring the fundamental quality of crypto projects.

Speculative demand will not disappear, and meme and narrative projects still have their market space. However, for the vast majority of projects, the golden age of issuing tokens to raise funds has passed, and what lies ahead for crypto projects is comprehensive competition. During the writing of this article, Blast and Abstract announced their closure; at the same time, CEX continues to delist crypto assets, with Binance delisting a total of 15 spot assets and 13 contract assets in Q3. This cleansing will not end quickly; it is an essential growing pain on the path of crypto's integration with RWA; once the path of integration begins, crypto will gain new life.

Summary

On a macro level, the conflict between the U.S. and Iran has escalated repeatedly, with Brent crude oil rising from $73.74 to over $108, and gasoline prices increasing by 27.4% year-on-year, while consumer one-year inflation expectations rose to 4.6%. The Federal Reserve completed its first interest rate hike of 2023, with the market estimating a 94% probability of another hike before the end of the year; the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 5.25% on September 28, the highest since June 2007. Bitcoin has moved in tandem with the Nasdaq, decoupling from gold's movements.

In terms of cryptocurrency, the market has clearly recovered after August 19, with Bitcoin rising 42% in the third quarter. However, the altcoin season index and Bitcoin's market share indicate that funds are still concentrated in Bitcoin. The perpetual contracts for crypto assets bottomed out in July and rebounded in September, but trading volume in the third quarter remains lower than in the first quarter. After the launch of Robinhood Chain and Arc, trading volume has grown rapidly, but transactions are still primarily focused on memes, and stock tokens and institutional settlements are still in the early stages.

On the industry level, this round of RWA bull market is mainly reflected in the growth of trading volume for RWA perpetual contracts on Binance and Hyperliquid, which is expected to be the main source of trading growth in the crypto industry by 2026. The on-chain RWA scale has grown by 85.2% this year (according to Binance Research). The meme bull market has disappeared, and new funds are primarily entering Bitcoin through ETFs. Among crypto-native projects, tokens with protocol revenue and continuous buybacks have significantly outperformed other altcoins.

Our basic judgment is that before the Strait of Hormuz resumes navigation and oil prices and government bond yields significantly decline, Bitcoin is likely to continue to fluctuate with the risk appetite of the U.S. stock market. The differentiation among crypto projects may continue to widen, and the sustainability of protocol revenue and buybacks will become more important selection criteria.

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