RE-EXAMINE RWA: THE FIRST TRADE IN THE FIRST CHAIN OF NEARLY 50,000 PEOPLE IS NOT BITCOIN, BUT STOCK AND CRUDE OIL

I. A weekend and a set of data

On 28 February, the United States airstriked Iran。

Because the global traditional market is closed on weekends, but @HyperliquidX is open, and for the first time a large number of users are in the chain to trade in crude oil. On 2 March, when the commodities were opened, Brent's crude oil jumped and RWA trading volumes on Hyperliquid peaked in the first wave。

The crisis did not quickly come to an end because of the victory over Khamenei’s beheading, and as the events continued to ferment, Hyperliquid’s RWA trade volumes were kept up to date for the next two weeks and peaked on March 10, with the HIP-3 market Open Interest breaking the $1.3 billion historical high。

Source:https://loris.tools/hip3

This is all due to Hyperliquid's HIP-3:

An agreement that allows anyone to deploy the market without permission for a lasting contract upgrade。

A Hyperliquid study released yesterday by @smartestxyz reveals a phenomenon that has been overlooked by most: these HIP-3 markets are not just serving Crystal users, who may be pulling people who never come into contact with Crystal into chains。

The report tracks an indicator called "Non-Crypto-First Users": the first transaction on the chain is the user of RWA Perp, not Cripto. As of March 2026, the number was 49,602. Nearly 50,000 people were first touched by Cripto, not by bitcoin, but by stock fingers, gold, crude oil。

More interesting by asset:

Source:https://x.com/smartxyz/status/20333136128216244560

This list includes not only traditional bulk commodities and blue chips, SpaceX 727, OpenAI 458. These two companies are not on the market at all, and there are no traditional channels around the globe for the diaspora to trade their shares, but the first chain of dealing is with them, using @ventuals' products。

Perhaps because of the ups and downs and downs of too many narratives, I have always had a preconceived bias about the RWA narrative (also known as STO, Security Token Offering) that began to take shape in 2018: it was an institutional narrative, a distribution of traditional finance to the Crypto market, and nothing to do with our Cripto Native. But the story of this set of data is completely reverse。

Differently arrived at the end of the day.

I have forgotten who said this, but I think it is the most accurate generalization of the RWA track, making me truly aware that my understanding of the RWA in the past was wrong, and that RWA could really have robbed users from Tradfi, by offering assets and experiences that traditional finance could not provide, and by serving users that traditional finance could not reach, thereby widening the boundaries of financial markets。

Hyperliquid gave me renewed hope for RWA。

II. Why traditional finance cannot serve these people

To understand RWA's core values, it's possible to figure out why nearly 50,000 of these addresses came into the chain and went to Hyperliquid, rather than to traditional coupons。

Source:https://x.com/HyperliquidX/status/2031994444444531053?s=20

From my point of view, I think there are several reasons:

1. Global access:

IT IS DIFFICULT FOR PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES AND EUROPE, WHERE THE FINANCIAL INFRASTRUCTURE IS WELL DEVELOPED, TO REALIZE HOW DIFFICULT IT IS FOR MOST OF THE WORLD TO TRADE IN AMERICAN SHARES OR CRUDE OIL. ONE VOUCHER ACCOUNT REQUIRES A KYC, A CASHIER, IDENTITY IN A PARTICULAR AREA OR A VISA, WHILE ONE OF THE OTHER OPTIONS FOR A CFC BROKER IS RESTRICTED OR OF POOR CREDIBILITY IN MANY COUNTRIES. THIS IS ACTUALLY THE BIGGEST MAN IN THE FINANCIAL WORLD WHO IS HUNGRY AND HUNGRY:

You think it's natural to "open up the App and lay down the list" that doesn't exist for most people around the globe. And Hyperliquid can be traded on the wallet, without KYC, without citizenship. (Of course, the absence of KYC means that someone will inevitably use it to achieve anonymous transactions and tax evasion, which is not the purpose of the platform design, but is one of the objective motivations for its use.)

2) Extremely low threshold:

TRADITIONAL FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS USUALLY HAVE A "FIRST HAND" CONCEPT: CME'S WTI CRUDE OIL FUTURES ARE ON A FIRST-HAND SCALE OF 1,000 BARRELS OF OIL AT AN OIL PRICE OF ABOUT 100$70,000, 100 barrels for the mini-contract, probablySeven thousand. Futures brokers usually also have minimum income and financial thresholds, but Hyperliquid can open up for a few dollars。

3) Higher leverage:

The U.S. Regulation T provides for a maximum of 2x leverage (overnight silos) for stock deposit transactions, and Pattern Day Trader can use 4x leverage in a day, provided that the account interest is not less than $25,000. In other words, you have to have $25,000 to qualify for 4x leverage. The RWA Perp on Hyperliquid could provide 20x leverage, and there is no requirement for a minimum account bond。

4) Monopoly:

The unlicensed deployment of HIP-3 means that anyone can create trading varieties where traditional finance does not exist. For example, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, unlisted companies, which are not traded through any channels in the traditional markets, and where they are, the HIP-3 Depoyer pledge HYPE becomes available。

5) 24/7 Experience:

Traditional commodity and stock markets have strict trading times. While major exchanges are constantly trying to extend their trading time, such as CME Globex, which has already brought the working day trading time to 23 hours (only one hour per day to maintain), Nasdaq has submitted a 23/5 program to the SEC (addition of 9pm-4am night disc), NYSE has received 22/5 initial approval, and the DTCC plan has achieved 24/5 liquidation by 2026, most of these efforts are working days, and weekends remain a vacuum。

The weekend of 28 February was the best example: the United States airstrike against Iran, a volatile market mood, but the traditional exchange closed, with crude oil, stock-indicated futures, silver, gold, and you wait until Monday. And the RWA Perp deployed on Hyperliquid is the real 24/7, year-round。

Source:https://hyperscreener.asxn.xyz/hip3markets/markets

The five things traditional finance can't do for the moment:

• Global access

• Very low threshold

• Higher leverage

• Unique

• 24/7 Experience

WHILE TRADITIONAL FINANCE WOULD BE AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO SEVERAL OF THEM IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE, IT WOULD BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO MEET ALL FIVE AT THE SAME TIME UNDER THE EXISTING REGULATORY FRAMEWORK AND MARKET STRUCTURES. SO RWA'S NEW WINDOW COULD BE MUCH LONGER THAN MANY WOULD HAVE IMAGINED。

III. Two types of demand for RWA: Trading and Holding

THERE ARE TWO DIFFERENT TYPES OF NEEDS, WHICH ARE ACTUALLY BROKEN DOWN BY THE INFLUX OF USERS WHO GAIN RWA EXPOSURE ON THE CHAIN:

1) Trading:Dealers want leverage, 24/7, low threshold. The 50,000 Non-Crypto-First users above are supposed to be most of them, and the location of Hyperliquid matches the user image。

The product form of the service demand is Perp. But in fact, the price differential contracts offered by Perp and the traditional CFC brokers (IG, Plus 500, CMC Markets) are very similar in nature, all derivatives used to track the price of the bottom asset, with cash delivery, no maturity, and synthesis。

@OstiumLabs' CTO Marco Antonio Ribeiro said a good word

Source:https://www.ostium.com/blog/ostium-launches-novel-macro-training-platform-amidst-global-events-based-trade

Perp has two fundamental improvements compared to CFC:

The first is the Funding rate payment mechanism between multiple parties, which automatically creates incentives to return prices when the Perp price deviates from the bottom asset, which is the central mechanism for Perp to align with traditional market prices, which is not available to the CFC. The second is to trust yourself, and your money is always on the chain, not in the hands of the broker. The core problem with the CFC is that the broker is your opponent, and you make money, and conflicts of interest lead to a large number of black brokers manipulating offers, slide points and withholding profits。

Indeed, in the end, traders do not care whether they actually hold a barrel of crude oil or a finger in the first hand, but rather move in and out to make price differentials and fluctuations, making money that really makes money, rather than being held back by black brokers’ platforms for irregularities. On this point, @HyperliquidX and @OstiumLabs from the new RWA Perp platform won。

Holding:

BUT THERE IS AN EQUALLY LARGE GAP IN DEMAND: NOT TRADE, BUT POSSESSION. A LARGE NUMBER OF NON-AMERICAN USERS AROUND THE WORLD, INCLUDING MYSELF, ARE AMONG THE THOUSANDS WHO WANT TO VOTE IN THE US AND ONE OF THE AI TARGETS。

The product form of this demand for services is Tokenized Stock, a truly monetized asset with 1:1 real shares held by the trustee behind it. Its price anchor is completely different from Perp's Funding Rate: Requisition and foreclosure: When the price on the chain deviates from the NAV, the arbitrator can equalize the price difference with the ETF mechanism by casting (buying bottom stock and casting Token) or foreclosing (buying token to redeem bottom stock)。

For such users, the claims are completely different: they do not need leverage, they do not need to be tradable at all times, they require genuine asset endorsement, compliance guarantees, and a sense of security that can be held for long. At this point, the goodwill and endorsement of the issuer becomes crucial. If you do not trust a distributor and do not believe that it will continue to operate, it would be better to pay for the money and put it in the traditional issuer to buy stocks, complex but reassuring。

This is not yet the main area of attack of Hyperliquid. Hyperliquid does Syndetic Perp, which is essentially a more credible CDF contract, serving the Trader community. Holder's line, however, is more like @OndoFinance and @xStocksFi, such as Tokenized Stock issuer, in the direction of farming: win the trust of long-term holders with 1:1 real asset endorsement, card hosting, compliance structure。

Even traditional financial giants are entering: the New Haven parent ICE invested in the $25 billion valuation strategy @okx, planning to provide a monetized version of shares on the New York Exchange in the future, with services apparently dominated by Hold in the medium and long term, supported by short-line Trading。

The two lines are developing rapidly each, but also share a structural problem:

Traditional markets don't open on weekends。

Core issues to be addressed: weekend prices

Frankly, RWA's infrastructure is better than many people think. Hyperliquid HIP-3 achieved $110 billion in cumulative transactions over a period of months. Ondo ' s Tokenized Stock (Ondo Global Markets) TVL was close to $700 million, xStocks cumulative transactions were $3 billion, and the demand was fully validated. When there is a demand, there is a market, there is mobility, and the ship can be turned。

But weekend prices have always been a difficult issue to overcome. After all, the right to discover the price of traditional assets is still in the traditional place of dealing, and there are no anchors for weekends, a fact that cannot be changed in a short period of time。

For Perp, the absence of anchor means that prices can be manipulated and marketed at a non-spacing risk; for Tokenized Stock, arbitrage is not possible without casting/foreclosure mechanisms, and chain prices can deviate from NAV in the short term. Of course, the impact on Trader and Holder is different. For Trader, the windfall of weekend prices is fatal, leverage magnifies everything and price deviations can lead to false liquidations or unstoppable losses. But for Holder, it doesn't necessarily take time to trade, and the lack of mobility on weekends is acceptable, and you're not going to sell your pension on weekends。

The response to this problem is now divided into two sectors:

1) Conservatives: no trades over weekends and acceptance of a liquidity vacuum

The RWA Perp @OstiumLabs, which is the way, can't close the traditional market and Oracle stops updating. @OndoFinance and @xStocksFi, providing TokenizeStock, are also essentially conservative, foundry and foreclosure take place only within the time of the US stock trade, and on weekends Token, though able to trade on DEX, does not officially provide liquidity security, 24/7 tradable 24/7 has an accurate price。

2) Radicals: Making their own weekend price discovery

The largest HIP-3 Deployer @tradexyz in Hyperliquid was the founder of the faction. Its program is called Discovery Bounds, which, in plain words, is to rise and fall. V1 version, with 5% of the Friday closing price as the weekend price limit, it's blocked. V2 Improvements: Prices continue to rise above the ceiling, and the system moves up the upholstery as a whole, up to two times, to a total of approximately ± 15.8 per cent, but the window remains at ± 5 per cent at any given time。

Quite frankly, the increase in the cut-off is not new to Chinese equity A: 10 per cent on the main board, 20 per cent on the scientific board, and 5 per cent on ST. The stock crash in 2015 proved that the rise and fall were also limited: a thousand shares fell, a board went on for days, and you couldn't run away. But it is good that, as the time of trading in traditional markets continues, @tradexayz will only have to take up less than 48 hours of vacuum on weekends (which will even be reduced to about 25 hours after Nasraq 23/5), and that when the traditional markets open on Monday, external price anchors will recover and the overall risk will be absorbed by the deep liquidity of traditional markets. In essence, Trade.xyz acts as a security cushion for abating risks in advance, allowing traders to gradually hedge and reposition on weekends, rather than stacking all pressures to the moment of the Monday opening, thereby reducing the intensity of the opening of traditional markets。

@tradexayz is not the only 24/7 radicalist。

@Dreamcash (Tether February 2026 strategic investment, USDT0 settlement, introduction of S& P500, gold, silver, etc.), @fefixprotocol (USDH settlement, running the DeFi loan agreement and the CDP model stabilization currency, also working with Ondo to introduce Spot Equities), and @kinetiq xyz (the initial American debt, Perp USBOND) @kinetiq xyz (HIP-3 Deployer deployed their respective RWA Perp markets on Hyperliquid and largely followed the 24/7 market design model pioneered by @tradexyz. This is, in fact, already the best transitional option available。

While there is considerable overlap in the assets deployed by Deployer, it seems interesting that this does not seem to be an internal volume, but rather a broker logic: Each Deployer has its own front end, its own user community, its own access, and their users do not necessarily know there's another Deployer, nor do they have to go to the main station of Hyperliquid and trade, as the data proves:

Source:https://x.com/smartxyz/status/20333136128216244560

Of the nearly 50,000 users whose traditional assets were first entered Hyperliquid, TradeXYZ contributed 92.75 per cent (46,005), Ventuals 3.73 per cent (1,851), Dreamcash 2.02 per cent (1,000), Felix 1.02 per cent (508) and Kinetiq 0.48 per cent (238). Each HIP-3 Deployer is bringing the incremental users of different images into the Hyperliquid ecology through their front-end and access channels。

V. Pre-IPO: What Wall Street can't do

The problem of weekend prices stems from the dependence of the chain assets on the external anchor of traditional markets, which are closed and broken. Then why not create an opportunity where the bottom assets themselves do not exist in traditional markets

Pre-IPO assets are exactly that opportunity。

Global private equity is a trillion-dollar-grade market, and in traditional markets, there are only two ways for the diaspora to invest in Pre-IPO: The first is the participation of qualified investors through private fund-raising, with a threshold of millions of dollars, and the second is the purchase of an old stock of staff transfers on a secondary market platform such as Forge Global, EquityZen, which is extremely fluid。

@ventuals is a project to fill this vacuum on Hyperliquid, providing a Perp for tracking private company valuations, users obtaining price openings for changes in valuations, contractual prices = company valuations / 1 billion. The contract is settled with USDH, maximum 3x leverage。

Of course, the valuation of Perp by private companies is a challenge. The Ventuals approach is interesting: Oracle Price is synthesized from the bottom of the chain of valuation data and the chain of Mark Price weighted. The lower part of the chain is connected to Notice (a platform for the valuation of private companies) and the upper part of the chain is two hours of EMA for Mark Price. The two are synthesized with 1/3:2/3 weight oracle Price, updated in 3 seconds. Mark Price ' s short-term fluctuations were also limited to prevent short-term manipulation。

When the label company is on the market, Ventuals' Perp settles. After opening the first day of the listing, Mark Price turned into a reference real-time equity price, and Oracle Price was also directly equivalent to Mark Price, with no reference to the Noice platform valuation data. After closing, all Ventuals slots were settled at closing prices, Pre-IPO Perp transitioned to a settlement based on IPO's first-day performance, which meant that traders were actually involved in the IPO price game, which was a bit of a Polymarket forecast of the taste of the new currency on the FDV market。

Interestingly, from Ventuals data

Source:https://x.com/smartxyz/status/20333136128216244560

Thirty-one per cent of Ventuals users trade on the Ventuals market, and nearly one third of them enter the Hyperliquid ecology because of Pre-IPO Perp. 25% of users only trade in Ventuals without touching any other HIP-3 Depoyer. Exactly what we said earlier, RWA is actually attracting an independent user base。

SOME RWA DOWNSTREAM DERIVATIVE OPPORTUNITIES

But RWA is not just Trading and Holding, it is generating new downstream demand:

@ryskfinanceAs the chain begins to be held and traded, the demand for options is a natural extension, because the images of the two user groups are themselves highly overlapping. For example: 1) Holder who holds Tokenized TSLA wants to earn additional earnings while holding them for a long period of time: sell Covered Call and collect options; 2) multi-tSLA Perp trader wants to buy insurance for his leverage position and buy Put to limit down risk; 3) look well at TSLA, but people who feel that the current price is high want to earn money while waiting for a return: sell Cash Secular Put, if the price falls, and if the price falls, then the right to pay。

In the past, stock options in the chain did not exist because there was a key missing link: the market took over the options bill, which required the use of the bottom asset as Delta Hedge, while the chain did not have sufficient depth to implement the Hedge. Now on the HIP-3 TSLA Perp has hundreds of millions of dollars in daily trade, and this precondition has been established。

@RyskFinance has verified the encrypted currency CoveredCall and Cash Secured Put, adding stock options is also a waterfall, and Counterparty is able to go directly to Delta Hedge on the Perp of Hyperliquid. @DériveXYZ also supports the refilling of Hyperliquid and the use of HYPE + USDH as a pledge, which is currently dominated by Crypto, but when the stock Perp is sufficiently liquid, the RWA option on the chain is simply an addition to the bottom。

@jup lend@kamino @TermMaxFiTokenized Stock TVL grew rapidly, followed naturally by the lending market. This is not just a simple money release logic of "held tokenized TSLA mortgages on USDC" (although it is in itself a huge demand, long-term holders do not want to sell shares but need liquidity). Even more interesting is that borrowing can help open up a set of structural strategies:

• Looping: Mortgageed Tokenized TSLA loaned USDC to buy more Tokenized TSLA re-collateralized and re-enriched TSLA. The chain is more convolutable and has no voucher approval。

• Funding Rate arbitrage: When the Funding Rate of TSLA perp is positive (overheading), you can Borrow USDC and Long Tokenized TSLA (possession of spot)+ Short TSLA Perp (directive risk). In turn, when Funding Rate is negative, Borrow Tokenized TSLA and Sell (sale appearance) + Long TSLA Perp (shock orientation risk). Both strategies make money from Funding Rate minus Borrow Rate's Spread. You can even use interest rate swaps like @SupernovaLabs and @ipor io and @boros fi to lock up borrowing costs or fluctuations in financial rates! The classic Cash and Carry arbitrage on top of the chain。

The infrastructure that underpins these strategies is fast-growing. @solana Ecology is the fastest: @kamino has accepted xStocks as collateral to lend Stablecoin, @jup lend has access to xStocks, and @falconfinance accepts xStocks casting in USD. Etheum / BNB, @TermMaxFi launched the first fixed interest-rate lending market on BNB Chain with Ondo Tokenized Stock as collateral. The lending infrastructure is in place, Perp is becoming more liquid, Tokenized Stock is growing, and the three feed each other, flying wheels。

I hope this is really different

If you stay long enough in the Crypto industry, seeing the words "traditional asset chain up" might be as reflective as I am, because it's not the first time。

1) STO HOT TIDE 2018-2019

Polymath, Harbor, Securitize, which has a huge amount of money, says the story of "compliance monetization". However, the few and over-specified supply-side activities that focus much of their attention on the legal framework and the regulation of the counterparty of asset distributors ultimately make them more complex than traditional IPOs. More deadly is the monetization of private equity, where private equity itself is sold for a limited period of time, where Token comes out waiting for Lock-up to expire, and where secondary markets are not liquid at all. Ultimately, only Securitize left the bindings with Circle, BlackRock. The story may be quite different if you focus on Public Stock's Tokenization, or go straight to Perp. However, while BitMex's Perp was already popular at that time, no one thought that it could be extended to non-encrypted primary assets, the Perp concept, and that it would take years for the genius SBF of the FTX to get real practice。

2) FTX-LED SHARE CURRENCY WAVE, 2021-2022

FTX is connected to the exchange of tokenized shares: 24/7 transactions TSLA, AAPL, COIN, etc., provided by CM-Equity AG, a German licensed broker, with 1:1 endorsement hosting, support for stock-breaking, bridge to traditional finance and crypto. The product experience is actually good, and so is the user. However, as FTX mines and SBFs went to prison and everything was emptied, the regulators then pointed to serious deficiencies in investor protection, and confidence in the entire track fell to zero overnight. But the product innovation left behind by FTX: it includes everything that can be made of Perp, cross-collaterals, unified bonds, and the design of these mechanisms, inherited almost completely by Hyperliquid ecology, and modified the trust model。

So what's the difference this time? After experience, the position is right:

First, it moves from supply side to demand side。

After the FTX, each of the RWA eruptions was driven by demand: DeFi collapsed in 2022-2023, the chain revenue collapsed, the Fed raised interest rates rose to 5 per cent, the chain users naturally needed a chain-based United States debt product to generate risk-free returns, and the United States debt RWA made billions of TVLs from zero, which was pure demand driven。

And the logic of this RWA Perp outbreak is as clear: crude oil, gold, silver surges early in 2026, geo-crisiss, traditional markets closed down on weekends and only chains. The fact that 50,000 people came to Hyperliquid trading shares and crude oil without leaflets or airdrop incentives was the real demand of the transaction that pulled them up。

Secondly, focus on what traditional finance cannot provide。

In the past, STO had "replaced uninhabited private assets into chains": the bottom assets, the legal framework, the logic of the transaction had all been transposed to traditional finance, the block chains were a clearing medium without liquidity, and the users naturally had no reason to use them. This round is different: Perp, 24/7 transactions, Pre-IPO Perp, higher leverage, and no minimum threshold of funding, which does not exist in traditional finance. With Tokenized Stock, global access, chain composition (as DeFi collateral, Looping, Funding Rate arbitrage), these traditional coupons are not available. Users come not because the stock on the chain works better than the coupons, but because the experience is only on the chain。

Although risks remain: regulatory shifts, prognosis attacks, the bankruptcy of distributors and liquidity crises, any one of them could make the story fail again。

With irreplaceable, there is a new bottom。

And when 50,000 people first touched Crypto, not to buy BTC, but to trade shares and oil, when ICE, the parent company of New Haven, invested in OKX with $25 billion in valuation and took board seats, when Nasdaq applied for 23/5 and DTCC 24/5 liquidations, anyone could see that demand was real, that traditional finance was really going down, and at least this time, it was different。

But do good, don't ask for the future。