CoinGecko's 2026 RWA Report, Data-Verified: Every Headline Number Re-Checked Against the Source

CoinGecko's RWA Report 2026 is one of the most-cited snapshots of the tokenized real-world-asset market. It is also one of the most-reposted — and by the time its figures have passed through a chain of Chinese-language and aggregator reposts, the numbers tend to drift: a growth rate gets attached to the wrong line, a billion becomes a million, a single token's market cap gets confused with an issuer's entire gold holdings.

This page is a data-verified digest. Every headline figure below is traced to CoinGecko's original report — which, for the question “what did the report actually say,” is the primary source. Where the report makes an asset-level claim we can check against an issuer or an independent dashboard — a token's market cap, a reserve, a backing model — we did the cross-check and note any discrepancy. The brand promise is simple: we re-checked every number against the source. For how we read any tokenized instrument, see our methodology.

The report covers the sector from the start of 2025 through Q1 2026, with a 31 March 2026 snapshot date for market-cap figures (per CoinGecko). Keep that date in mind: a live dashboard you check today will read higher, because the market kept growing after the snapshot.

The top-line story is straightforward growth, but the exact numbers matter — these are the ones most often garbled downstream:

• Total tokenized RWAs: US$19.32 billion. The sector's market capitalization rose from US$5.42 billion at the start of 2025 to US$19.32 billion as of 31 March 2026 — a 15-month increase of +256.7%, which CoinGecko describes as having “more than tripled” (per CoinGecko).
• Still small next to stablecoins — but catching up. Tokenized RWAs are 6.4% of the size of stablecoins, up from 2.7% at the start of 2025, meaning RWA growth outpaced stablecoins over the year (per CoinGecko).
• Segment mix at quarter-end. Tokenized Treasuries hold roughly 67.2% of the sector, commodities 28.7%, tokenized stocks 2.5% and tokenized ETFs 1.5% (per CoinGecko).
• Trading is concentrating on centralized venues. The report notes that CEXs account for the large majority of tokenized-asset spot trading (per CoinGecko).

One verification note on the largest line. CoinGecko's 31 March 2026 figure for tokenized Treasuries works out to roughly US$13.0 billion (67.2% of US$19.32 billion), after the class crossed US$10 billion on 11 February 2026 (per CoinGecko). Checked against the independent rwa.xyz dashboard on 29 May 2026, tokenized Treasuries read approximately US$15.0 billion — higher, but consistent with continued growth past the report's snapshot, and with the same lead issuers the report names (BlackRock's BUIDL, Ondo, Franklin's BENJI, WisdomTree and Superstate). Different dates, same direction.

Underneath the headline, each segment tells its own story (all figures per CoinGecko unless cross-checked below):

• Tokenized Treasuries. The largest class added US$9.00 billion (+225.5%) over the period — more than half of all sector growth — even as its market share eased from 73.7% to 67.2% as other classes gained.
• Tokenized commodities: +289.1% to US$5.55 billion. The class grew from US$1.43 billion, first crossing US$5 billion on 19 January 2026 and peaking at US$6.69 billion on 5 February before retracing 20.6% into quarter-end. Gold dominates: XAUT (Tether) and PAXG (Paxos) together drove 89.1% of the expansion.
• Tokenized gold spot volume: US$90.7 billion in Q1 2026. That single quarter already surpassed the US$84.6 billion traded across all of 2025 — a demand surge as gold rallied, with monthly volume as volatile as US$6.73 billion (Sep 2025) to US$21.38 billion (Oct 2025).
• Tokenized stocks: US$486.69 million. From near-zero (US$2.09 million on 30 June 2025), the class scaled as Backed Finance's xStocks and then Ondo's tokenized equities rolled out. Circle leads at US$171.39 million (35.2% share), ahead of Tesla (12.7%), Nvidia (8.8%), Alphabet (7.6%) and MicroStrategy (5.4%) — though the top five together trade at under 1% of their real-world counterparts' volume.
• Tokenized ETFs: US$297.50 million.Growth here is broad-based with no clear leader: Ondo's SPDR S&P 500 (US$32.45 million, 10.9%) edges the iShares Silver Trust (US$31.75 million, 10.7%), with a long tail of smaller products holding a combined 27.8% share.
• RWA perpetuals: US$524.79 billion in Q1 2026. Perps for RWAs and TradFi assets jumped past the US$313.02 billion traded in all of 2025 — the fourth straight quarterly increase. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 alone grew from 2.8% of monthly RWA-perp volume at its October 2025 launch to 28.6% by March 2026, and daily open interest reached US$6.68 billion on 31 March 2026.

The Asia-Pacific thread runs through the commodity segment. Among the smaller gold tokens, Singapore-issued XAUM (Matrixdock) scaled roughly elevenfold to US$0.07 billion and entered the top five (per CoinGecko). Matrixdock — part of the Matrixport group — backs each XAUM 1:1 with LBMA-accredited physical gold vaulted in Asia, with reserves independently audited by Bureau Veritas, the auditor of the world's largest gold ETF (per Matrixdock). That issuer-level detail is what turns a row in a chart into a verifiable claim.

These are the specific places where downstream reposts of this report tend to break — and what the source actually says:

• “+289%” is commodities, not the whole market. The total RWA market grew +256.7%($5.42B → $19.32B, about 3.56x — “more than tripled”). The +289.1% figure belongs to tokenized commodities alone ($1.43B → $5.55B). Reposts routinely staple the 289% onto the headline total. They are two different numbers for two different lines (per CoinGecko).
• XAUT's market cap is not Tether's gold pile. CoinGecko marks XAUT at US$2.52 billion. Tether's own attestation for 31 March 2026 — reviewed by BDO Italia — reports 707,747.09 XAU₮ tokens in circulation with a market value of US$3.30 billion, of which only the sold tranche (559,598.64 tokens) is worth US$2.61 billion; the remainder is held by an affiliate, available for sale (per Tether). CoinGecko's US$2.52 billion tracks the circulating/sold figure, not the full minted amount — so do not read XAUT's traded market cap as US$3.30 billion. And the “~140 tonnes / US$23–24 billion” gold figure that circulates online is Tether the company's total gold holdings, not XAUT token backing — the XAUT tokens in circulation correspond to roughly 22 tonnes (707,747 troy ounces). Conflating the two overstates the token by an order of magnitude.
• Snapshot vs live numbers. The report's market-cap figures are a 31 March 2026 snapshot. A live aggregator such as rwa.xyz will read higher today simply because time has passed — for instance tokenized Treasuries at ~US$15.0 billion on 29 May 2026 versus the report's ~US$13.0 billion at quarter-end. Both can be correct; they are different dates. Treat any number without a date attached with caution.
• Units matter. Tokenized stocks and ETFs are measured in millions (US$486.69 million and US$297.50 million), not billions. Reposts that promote these to billions inflate two of the smallest segments tenfold (per CoinGecko).

The pattern is consistent: the errors are rarely invented numbers, they are correct numbers attached to the wrong line, the wrong unit, or the wrong date. That is exactly the failure mode a primary-source check catches.

Our standard is the same one we apply across this site, including the Hong Kong RWA regulation timeline: an aggregator like CoinGecko or rwa.xyz is a primary source for what its own report or dashboard states, but an asset-level fact — a specific token's market cap, a reserve, a regulatory status — must be traced back to the issuer or regulator.

• The report itself — every headline figure here is read directly from CoinGecko's RWA Report 2026 web edition, updated 13 May 2026, and cited as such.
• Treasuries order of magnitude — cross-checked against the independent rwa.xyz dashboard, which corroborates both the scale and the lead issuers, with dates noted separately.
• Gold tokens — XAUT checked against Tether's BDO Italia-reviewed reserve attestation; PAXG's 1:1 backing against Paxos's monthly transparency reports; XAUM's LBMA backing and Bureau Veritas audit against Matrixdock's own disclosures.

Where we could not trace a sub-claim to a primary source — the report's unnamed CEX breakdown, or the legal wrapper and regulatory status of individual tokenized stocks — we simply repeated what the report says and went no further. The companion verification record lists every number, its source, and every fact we deliberately left out. That discipline is the whole point: a figure you cannot trace to a source is a figure we do not print.