Binance Research, the research arm of the Binance exchange, has released a report titled The RWA Activation Era. The study focuses on how tokenized real-world assets, or RWAs, are used after issuance in trading, liquidity pools, lending and collateral markets.

According to Binance Research, total RWA assets under management reached $34.18 billion as of Sept. 15, 2026, an increase of 85.2% since the start of the year.

Bonds and money market funds remained the largest category, with $18.29 billion in onchain assets. Tokenized equities were among the fastest-growing categories, rising 390.4% year to date to $4.43 billion. Together, the two segments accounted for more than three-quarters of the market’s growth.

The report also identified growth in gold and commodities, private credit and real estate. Binance Research said the expansion showed that tokenization was moving beyond crypto-native collateral into a broader range of traditional markets.

Tokenization remains limited

Despite the growth, Binance Research estimated that tokenized assets represented only about 0.01% of their corresponding underlying markets.

Tokenized equities illustrate the gap. Their $4.43 billion onchain balance amounted to 0.0029% of the $151.9 trillion public-equities market, according to the report.

Bond and money market funds had an estimated Programmable Asset Ratio of 0.0171%. Binance Research said their larger asset base provided a sizable pool of yield-bearing instruments for onchain applications, while equities were scaling more quickly because of broader distribution and access.

Report introduces PAR and CAR metrics

Binance Research introduced two metrics intended to measure both the scale of tokenization and the use of tokenized assets in financial applications.

The Programmable Asset Ratio, or PAR, measures the share of a relevant underlying market represented by programmable onchain assets. The Capital Activation Rate, or CAR, measures the share of the tokenized base deployed in applications including liquidity pools, lending protocols and collateral markets.

Binance Research estimated overall PAR at about 0.01% and overall CAR at about 12%. On that basis, roughly $12 of every $100 in tracked tokenized-asset value was being used in onchain financial applications.

The aggregate figure varied significantly among asset classes. Private credit had the highest CAR at 49.67%, while the rate for equities rose from 1.95% at the start of 2026 to 7.54%.

Liquidity pools accounted for 65.4% of tokenized-equity total value locked in decentralized finance, while lending represented another 28.1%. Together, those uses comprised 93.5% of deployed tokenized-equity value.

Tokenized-equity scenarios for 2030

Drawing on forecasts from an earlier report, Tokenization’s Trillion-Dollar Runway, Binance Research outlined conservative, base and bull scenarios of about $61 billion, $349 billion and $987 billion, respectively, in tokenized equities by 2030.

Relative to the current $4.43 billion market, those forecasts corresponded to PAR estimates of about 0.04%, 0.23% and 0.65%.

The report said higher assets under management should generally produce a higher PAR, all else being equal. CAR could develop independently, however, depending on whether liquidity, lending and collateral applications expand alongside asset issuance.

Under Binance Research’s 2030 base case, about $349 billion in equities could become programmable. A 10% CAR would put activated capital at $34.94 billion, while a 20% CAR would raise that amount to $69.87 billion without additional issuance of tokenized assets.

Binance Research said broader adoption could increase PAR by bringing more assets and users onchain, while integrations with liquidity, lending and collateral markets could raise CAR by giving holders more ways to deploy those assets. The report said simultaneous growth in PAR and CAR would indicate that tokenization was progressing from asset issuance toward repeatable financial use.

Source: Incrypted