I. Definition of TradFi and the Evolutionary Logic in the Crypto World
TradFi, or Traditional Finance, in the crypto context specifically refers to bringing traditional financial assets—including stocks, bonds, commodities, forex, ETFs, and more—into the crypto market for trading through tokenization or synthetic assets. This concept did not originate in 2026, but its development has gone through three distinctly different phases. The first phase was the "Synthetic Asset Experimentation Period" from 2020 to 2022. During that time, Mirror Protocol and Synthetix pioneered on-chain synthetic U.S. stocks, while FTX and Binance offered tokenized stock trading services through partnerships with licensed brokers. However, the collapse of FTX in 2022, combined with the global tightening of crypto regulations, forced most tokenized stock businesses offline, and this phase concluded with an industry-wide restructuring. The second phase was the "Treasury Tokenization Phase" from 2023 to 2024. In an environment of aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes, DeFi protocols such as MakerDAO began incorporating U.S. Treasuries as underlying RWA assets. BlackRock launched the BUIDL fund in March 2024 with initial seed capital of $100 million, surpassing $1 billion in scale within months, marking the official entry of Wall Street giants.
The third phase is the "Broad-Based Asset Expansion Phase" from the second half of 2025 to the present. Tokenized stocks have re-entered a growth trajectory, with MyStonks completing U.S. STO compliance filings, Backed Finance issuing real-asset-backed xStocks across 9 chains, and traditional custodians such as Fidelity and Swiss banks beginning to participate. More importantly, crypto exchanges are no longer satisfied with merely listing tokenized assets—they are directly launching TradFi perpetual futures products, bringing traditional assets such as U.S. stocks, gold, and Treasuries into the 24/7 on-chain trading ecosystem in derivatives form. HTX, as a veteran platform in the crypto industry, took the lead in this phase by deploying its TradFi perpetual futures product line, using core U.S. equity underlyings such as NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, META, and SPY as entry points, providing crypto users with a new pathway to trade global core assets without leaving the on-chain ecosystem. The underlying logic of this evolution is that the crypto market needs new capital inflows and user cohorts, and traditional financial assets serve as the most effective bridge connecting the global $75 trillion equity market and the $130 trillion bond market. For HTX, the introduction of TradFi assets signifies a strategic upgrade from a crypto-native platform to a multi-asset trading platform.
II. Market Structure and Competitive Landscape
The current TradFi tokenization market presents a competitive landscape with three major tracks developing in parallel. The first track is "Tokenized Real Assets," represented by BlackRock BUIDL, Ondo Finance, Backed Finance, and MyStonks. Its hallmark is that assets exist on-chain as ERC-20 tokens, corresponding 1:1 with underlying real assets, managed by licensed custodians. BlackRock BUIDL occupies a dominant market position in the tokenized U.S. Treasuries sector with $2.3 billion in AUM, accounting for approximately 25% to 30% of the tokenized U.S. Treasuries sub-market; Ondo Finance's OUSG has grown to the multi-billion dollar level; Backed Finance's xStocks operate across 9 chains without KYC requirements but with whitelist access. The second track is "TradFi Perpetuals," the fastest-growing subsector in 2026. Coinbase launched U.S. equity perpetuals in March 2026, targeting non-U.S. users, supporting individual stocks such as Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla, as well as ETFs including SPY and QQQ, with up to 10x leverage for individual stocks and 20x for ETFs, settled in USDC with 24/7 trading. HTX has also launched TradFi perpetual futures including NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, META, and SPY, providing users with USDT-settled global U.S. equity derivatives trading services. Hyperliquid holds a 28.6% market share in the RWA perpetual contract space through its HIP-3 protocol. RWA perpetual contract trading volume in Q1 2026 reached $524.8 billion, already surpassing the $313 billion for all of 2025.
The third track is "TradFi Integrated Trading Infrastructure," aimed at providing a unified trading interface for traditional and crypto assets. Some leading platforms integrate contracts for difference (CFDs) through third-party systems such as MT5, while others independently develop index-based perpetual contract products that bundle multiple traditional assets into indices for trading. From market data, the tokenized RWA market reached $31 billion to $34 billion in TVL by May 2026, a nearly 3x increase from approximately $11 billion a year earlier. Tokenized gold grew from $1.43 billion to $5.55 billion, a 289% increase; tokenized stocks grew from $2 million to $486 million, growing over 200x. BCG predicts the global tokenized asset market could reach $16 trillion by 2030, representing approximately 10% of global GDP; McKinsey's conservative estimate is approximately $2 trillion. Whether optimistic or conservative, there remains tens to hundreds of times growth potential between the current market size and the long-term addressable space.
III. Core Risk Analysis
Although TradFi tokenization holds vast prospects, the risks it faces are equally significant. These risks are both potential pitfalls for investors and core challenges that platform operators must prudently manage. First is compliance and regulatory risk, currently the largest source of uncertainty. Tokenized securities are essentially securities issuances and must comply with securities laws in various jurisdictions. The U.S. SEC's regulatory stance on on-chain securities remains in a gray area—Coinbase's U.S. equity perpetuals are only available to non-U.S. users, a strategy that itself reflects the complexity of the regulatory environment. The fragmentation of cross-border regulation means that the same tokenized asset may face entirely different compliance requirements across different jurisdictions, posing an ongoing compliance challenge for globally operating crypto exchanges. HTX, in deploying its TradFi perpetual futures, similarly needs to navigate the operational complexity arising from regulatory differences across regions. Second is liquidity risk. Although RWA perpetual contract Q1 trading volume reached $524.8 billion, the total market cap of tokenized spot stocks is only $486 million—a significant imbalance in liquidity depth between spot and derivatives. This structural liquidity mismatch could lead to severe price deviations under extreme market conditions, increasing liquidation risk for traders. Additionally, the misalignment between U.S. stock trading hours and the crypto market's 24/7 trading model may result in insufficient price discovery during non-trading sessions, increasing slippage and abnormal volatility risks. Third is smart contract and technology risk. Tokenized assets rely on the accurate execution of smart contracts, and any contract vulnerability could result in asset losses. While institutional-grade products such as BlackRock BUIDL are supported by compliant platforms like Securitize, tokenized assets at the DeFi protocol layer still face risks of insufficient contract auditing and oracle manipulation. Fourth is custody and settlement risk. Tokenized real assets require reliable custodians as backing; should a custodian experience credit risk (such as a repeat of the FTX incident), token holders may face an inability to redeem underlying assets. Although current mainstream solutions employ traditional custodians such as Fidelity and Swiss banks, the legal correspondence between on-chain tokens and off-chain assets has yet to receive clear precedent support in many jurisdictions. Fifth is exchange rate and interest rate risk. TradFi perpetual futures are typically settled in USDT or USDC, but the underlying assets are denominated in USD. Exchange rate fluctuations may affect actual returns for non-USD users. Simultaneously, changes in Federal Reserve interest rate policy may directly impact U.S. equity performance, which in turn transmits to price volatility in TradFi perpetual futures.
IV. Innovation Trends and Track Opportunities
The TradFi tokenization track is exhibiting four major innovation trends, which present strategic growth opportunities for crypto exchanges such as HTX. Trend one is the rapid expansion of perpetual contract product matrices. Following Coinbase's pioneering launch of U.S. equity perpetuals, an increasing number of crypto exchanges are integrating U.S. equity perpetual product lines, with underlyings expanding from the initial 5 to 10 blue-chip stocks toward semiconductor ETFs, crypto-concept stocks, and sector-themed ETFs. HTX has already launched contracts for NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, META, and SPY, with the potential to cover more TradFi underlyings in the future, building a complete trading matrix for core U.S. equities. From a competitive landscape perspective, exchanges that are first to establish a comprehensive TradFi product matrix will gain first-mover advantages in user acquisition and trading fee revenue. Trend two is the maturation of institutional-grade infrastructure. BlackRock BUIDL's rapid expansion from $100 million in seed capital to $2.3 billion in AUM, along with the filing of two new tokenized funds signaling a transition toward a product suite expansion, conveys the long-term commitment of Wall Street's top institutions to tokenization. The participation of traditional custodians such as Fidelity and Swiss banks, and one-stop services provided by compliant platforms like Securitize for KYC, whitelisting, on-chain issuance and redemption, are lowering the barriers to institutional entry. Franklin Templeton's Benji fund has been operating continuously since its 2021 launch, and Ondo Finance's OUSG has grown to the multi-billion dollar level—institutional tokenized product lines have taken initial shape. This institutionalization trend means that TradFi tokenization is moving from "fringe experimentation" to "mainstream allocation," and the value of crypto exchanges as gateways connecting institutional capital with on-chain assets will rise accordingly. Trend three is the emergence of Permissioned DeFi Pools. This is the most noteworthy structural innovation in the RWA space in 2026. Institutions create KYC/AML-whitelisted DeFi liquidity pools on public chains, allowing qualified participants to trade tokenized Treasuries 24/7 while implementing automated compliance checks through smart contracts. This model, viewed as a critical bridge for large-scale institutional entry, retains DeFi's composability and efficiency advantages while meeting regulatory requirements for investor suitability. Trend four is the gradual clarification of regulatory frameworks. The EU's MiCA regulation takes full effect in July 2026, the U.S. GENIUS Act was enacted in March 2025, 72 jurisdictions globally have established crypto asset regulatory frameworks, and 58 countries have adopted FATF Travel Rules. Regulatory certainty is transitioning from a "gray area" to "clear rules," providing institutional guarantees for the long-term development of TradFi tokenization. For HTX, regulatory clarification means it can invest resources in building its TradFi product line with greater confidence, without concerns about business disruption risks from sudden policy shifts.
V. Participation Strategies and Investment Logic
For investors, the TradFi tokenization track offers multi-layered investment participation paths. The first layer is direct participation in TradFi perpetual futures trading. Platforms such as HTX have already launched U.S. equity perpetuals, allowing investors to use USDT as margin to conduct leveraged trading on underlyings such as NVDA, AAPL, and SPY on a 24/7 basis. The advantage of this pathway lies in low trading thresholds—no need to open a traditional brokerage account to trade global core assets—but attention must be paid to funding rate fluctuations and forced liquidation risks of perpetual contracts. In particular, the misalignment between U.S. stock trading hours and the crypto market's 24/7 model may result in insufficient price discovery during non-U.S. stock trading sessions, increasing trading risk. The second layer is investing in protocol tokens of the RWA track. Ondo Finance (ONDO), as the leading protocol in the tokenized U.S. Treasuries sector, has token value positively correlated with on-chain Treasury scale growth. RWA infrastructure protocols such as Centrifuge are also worth monitoring. The third layer is positioning in crypto exchanges that provide TradFi trading infrastructure. With the explosive growth of TradFi perpetual futures trading volume—reaching $524.8 billion in Q1 2026—exchanges that list TradFi products will directly benefit from trading fee growth. By launching U.S. equity perpetuals, HTX is unlocking the addressable market opportunity of the $75 trillion U.S. equity market, which carries strategic significance for its platform revenue and user growth. It is particularly important to note that investors should pay attention to exchanges' compliance qualifications and risk control capabilities. Coinbase, as a Nasdaq-listed company, has a natural advantage in compliance; other exchanges mitigate direct regulatory conflict by targeting non-U.S. users. Regarding risk warnings, TradFi tokenization is still in its early stages—the liquidity depth of tokenized assets falls far short of traditional markets, and price discovery mechanisms remain immature. Investors should strictly control position sizes, prioritize tokenized products backed by real assets, and avoid participating in high-leverage synthetic asset trading that lacks a compliance foundation. Attention should also be paid to the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on non-USD users, as well as the transmission effects of Federal Reserve interest rate policy changes on U.S. equity performance.
VI. Conclusion and Outlook
TradFi tokenization is reshaping the boundaries of the crypto industry. From the synthetic asset experiments in 2020 to BlackRock BUIDL's institutional-grade entry in 2024, to the comprehensive deployment of U.S. equity perpetuals by exchanges such as Coinbase and HTX in 2026, this track has completed the leap from "proof of concept" to "product matrix" in six years. The current key data points are sufficiently striking: RWA market TVL has surpassed $31 billion, RWA perpetual contract quarterly trading volume exceeds $500 billion, tokenized stock market cap grew over 200x within a year, and Wall Street giants such as BlackRock have incorporated tokenization into their core product strategies. Standing at the mid-2026 time point, we assess that TradFi tokenization remains in the "early acceleration stage of the growth curve." Although a vast gap exists between BCG's projected $16 trillion long-term space and McKinsey's $2 trillion conservative estimate, even the conservative estimate implies tens of times growth potential from current market scale. In the short term, the expansion of the U.S. equity perpetual product matrix, the institutional implementation of Permissioned DeFi Pools, and the full execution of regulatory frameworks such as MiCA will serve as three major catalysts driving market growth. HTX, as an important participant in the crypto industry, has already secured a favorable position in this track by launching TradFi perpetual futures for NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, META, and SPY. In the medium to long term, when the trading depth and user experience of TradFi assets on-chain reach parity with traditional brokerages, crypto exchanges will truly complete the transformation from "crypto asset platforms" to "multi-asset trading infrastructure." This is not merely a technology-level upgrade but a fundamental paradigm shift in financial infrastructure. For HTX users, this means the era in which a single account can trade both crypto assets and global core traditional assets is arriving.
