Crypto Market Recap: January 2026

Ethereum remains the leading chain, accounting for 60% of total RWA value. BNB Chain comes second with 9.2%, followed by Liquid Network with 6.5%. Solana ranks fourth, while Stellar is fifth, recently entering the $1B RWA value club.

Tokenized gold deserves special attention. Gold prices breached the psychological $5,000/oz level, helping drive massive on-chain trading interest in tokenized gold and silver across DeFi platforms and pushing 24-hour volumes into the billions. Leading the charge are industry giants Paxos and Tether, both of which reported record inflows this month. Paxos Gold (PAXG) alone saw $248M in inflows in January, pushing its market cap to $2.2B.

At the same time, Tether’s gold-backed token (XAUT) has seen its supply surge as the company continues adding to its physical reserves. The company has accumulated over 140 tons of physical gold, valued at roughly $23 billion, which would place it around 23rd globally by gold reserves, just behind the Central Bank of Brazil (~145 tons), if it were classified as a country.

This momentum also aligned with growth in Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 ecosystem, where permissionless perpetual markets enable builders to launch RWA-linked products such as commodity perps. In total, HIP-3 markets account for $42B in trading volume, 34M trades, and nearly 100K unique traders. Current open interest across HIP-3 markets stands at $880M. trade(.)xyz now captures 89% of HIP-3 volume. As of February 3, silver is the platform’s top tokenized RWA by trading volume at $1.72B, followed by gold ($0.48B) and XYZ100, an index representing the 100 largest non-financial public companies ($0.36B).

Long-term projections highlight the scale of this trend. McKinsey & Company estimates the tokenized asset market could reach $2-4T by 2030, while Boston Consulting Group forecasts a more aggressive $16T scenario.

Conclusion

As the crypto market has become increasingly intertwined with the American economy, the industry’s trajectory will be determined by U.S. economic performance, legislative developments, and global trends such as rising metals demand.

In the current environment, prediction markets and RWA tokenization stand out as exceptions, demonstrating growth amid broader market weakness. Both sectors expand the range of on-chain instruments available to investors: prediction markets appeal primarily to retail participants, while RWA projects attract institutional capital seeking exposure to tokenized real-world assets.

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