Perps vs RWA tokens, Gold tokens break records, tokens and ETFs: The Intersection #14

Welcome to the fourteenth letter from TheIntersection team. Our aim is simple: to decode and deconstruct the world of real-world asset tokenisation, stablecoins and DeFi for mainstream professional investors.

In this issue:

1. News: BlackRock expands tokenisation push
2. Data: Tokenised Gold Breaks Records
3. Worth reading: Are tokens an ETF-Style Market Structure Revolution
4. Analysis: What are 'perps' and are they superior to tokenised RWAs?
5. Our weekly events round-up

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BlackRock expands tokenisation push with stablecoin-focused funds

BlackRock is preparing two new tokenised money market funds aimed at stablecoin issuers and crypto-native institutions — its clearest sign yet that tokenised finance is becoming part of mainstream cash management infrastructure. One fund would tokenise shares of BlackRock’s existing Treasury liquidity products, while the second is designed specifically for use as a stablecoin reserve. The goal is straightforward: give issuers access to regulated, yield-bearing Treasury exposure directly on blockchain rails.

The move builds on the rapid growth of BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, which has already become one of the largest tokenised Treasury products in the market. Tokenised money market funds are no longer being positioned as niche crypto products -they’re increasingly being treated as reserve infrastructure for stablecoins and digital payments. The line between stablecoins, Treasury funds and on-chain cash management is starting to blur. BlackRock’s latest move suggests tokenised finance is evolving into a new layer of financial infrastructure rather than a standalone crypto market.

News in Brief

JPMorgan, Ripple and Mastercard complete tokenised Treasury transfer
JPMorgan Chase’s Kinexys platform, working with Ripple and Mastercard, completed a near real-time cross-border redemption of tokenised U.S. Treasuries linked to Ondo Finance assets on the XRP Ledger.
Why it matters: The transaction demonstrated that tokenised Treasuries can now move across borders with crypto-like settlement speeds while remaining tied to traditional financial assets.

Nasdaq and NYSE prepare for tokenised trading
Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange have both confirmed plans to support tokenised securities trading as post-trade blockchain infrastructure matures.
Why it matters: Major exchanges are preparing for a market structure where equities and ETFs can trade and settle on blockchain rails.

Tokenised Treasury market surpasses $10bn
According to recent CoinGecko data, tokenised U.S. Treasuries have crossed the $10bn mark and now account for roughly two-thirds of the broader RWA sector.
Why it matters: Yield-bearing government debt continues to dominate institutional adoption of tokenised assets.

Deep Dive — BlackRock moves deeper into tokenised finance

The Top Line

BlackRock’s latest filings suggest tokenised money market funds are evolving from niche crypto products into core infrastructure for the stablecoin market.

The Details

BlackRock is preparing two new tokenised money market fund structures aimed at stablecoin issuers and crypto-native institutions. One would create an on-chain share class tied to BlackRock’s existing Treasury liquidity fund. The other is being designed specifically for stablecoin reserve management — effectively giving issuers direct access to regulated, yield-bearing Treasury exposure on blockchain rails. That’s a notable shift. Until recently, most stablecoin reserves sat almost entirely inside traditional financial infrastructure, even if the tokens themselves moved on-chain. BlackRock’s approach starts bringing the reserve layer closer to the blockchain economy itself. The strategy is becoming easier to see:

• Stablecoins handle payments and settlement
• Tokenised Treasury funds provide reserves and yield
• Blockchain acts as the transfer and collateral layer connecting the two

The move also builds on the rapid rise of BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, which has already become one of the largest tokenised Treasury products in the market and has expanded across several blockchain networks. In practical terms, that could mean stablecoin reserves becoming:

• Yield-bearing by default
• Easier to move across blockchain networks
• More integrated into on-chain lending and liquidity systems

Worth Reading - Flowtraders and ETFs

An excellent Substack letter by FlowTraders, one of the biggest financial market makers. It's a fresh take on tokenisation that cuts through the usual hype: stop thinking of it as a new asset class, and start thinking of it as a market structure upgrade - specifically, the ETF revolution, but round two.

When ETFs arrived in the 90s, most people shrugged and called them a mutual fund in a new box. What they actually did was rewire how markets work — create/redeem arbitrage kept prices honest, liquidity pooled at the wrapper level, and costs collapsed. Tokenisation, the argument goes, does the same thing: it's not creating new economic assets; it's creating a more efficient way to issue, trade, and settle the ones we already have.

The mechanics map almost perfectly, according to Michael at FlowTraders. Minting and burning tokens is just creation and redemption by another name. If a token trades above its underlying value, arbitrageurs mint more; if it trades below, they redeem. Same discipline, new rails. The big caveat is fragmentation - unlike ETFs sitting on a single exchange, tokens can trade across DEXs, CEXs, and OTC venues simultaneously, which only works cleanly if cross-venue arbitrage is actually frictionless.

Then there's the 24/7 angle, which Flow Traders (as market makers) are clearly excited about. A tokenised Apple stock could react to weekend news and effectively become a price discovery mechanism before Monday's open -the same way US-listed European equity ETFs already price in overnight moves using futures and FX signals. For institutions, the pitch is practical: near-instant settlement frees up capital, programmable collateral reduces friction, and round-the-clock liquidity eliminates gap risk. The conclusion is measured but optimistic - the question is no longer whether tokenisation has a role in capital markets, but how to implement it in a way that replicates what ETFs achieved: deep liquidity, tight pricing, and broad institutional adoption.

Tokenization: An ETF-Style Market Structure Revolution

In the 1990s, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were a novel idea.

Flow TradersMichael

Tokenised Gold Breaks Records

Spot trading in tokenised gold reached $90.7 billion in Q1 2026 alone - a figure that already exceeds the $84.6 billion recorded across the whole of 2025. The leap marks a decisive shift in how crypto-native and institutional investors are accessing bullion exposure, with blockchain-based gold products increasingly treated not as a novelty but as a core allocation tool.

The macro backdrop has been crucial. Gold reached all-time highs through late 2025 and into 2026, with spot prices above $4,600 per ounce by Q1 2026. When the underlying asset rallies, derivative and tokenised exposure typically follow. But the tokenised gold story is not purely price-led. Investors are turning to tokenised gold for 24/7 liquidity, DeFi utility, and easier access to physical gold - attributes that traditional bullion ETFs cannot offer.

Two products dominate the landscape almost entirely. PAX Gold (PAXG) from Paxos and Tether Gold (XAUT) from Tether together drove 89.1% of the tokenised commodities expansion, contributing $1.80 billion and $1.87 billion in market cap growth, respectively. PAXG notably gained market share, rising to 41.8%, while XAUT held steady around 45%. On average over the last 15 months, PAXG and XAUT saw $5.72 billion and $5.32 billion, respectively, while the average total monthly volume was $11.69 billion.

Activity has not been linear. Tokenised gold spot volume climbed to $21.38 billion in October 2025 as gold reached new highs, then eased to $14.07 billion the following month. That volatility in monthly figures reflects the asset's sensitivity to macro triggers rather than structural retreat: a pattern reinforced by the observation that PAXG and XAUT gained attention during Middle East tensions in early 2026, while Bitcoin and other major tokens weakened. If the Q1 pace holds, annualised tokenised gold volume could exceed $360 billion, more than four times the 2025 level. Sustaining that will require continued exchange depth, issuer transparency, and vault custody confidence, but the structural case, underpinned by gold's macro role and the 24/7 programmability of on-chain settlement, has rarely looked stronger.

Tokenized Gold — Key Data at a Glance (Q1 2026)

Source: CoinGecko RWA Report 2026, published May 2026

What are 'perps' and are they superior to tokenised RWAs?

By Toby Lawes

Perpetual futures tied to real world assets (RWAs) have enjoyed explosive growth in recent years - eclipsing the growth of tokenised RWAs. Almost $8 trillion in perp value changed hands on decentralised exchanges in 2025, according to data from DefiLlama.

Although perps compete with tokenised RWAs by providing on-chain exposure to assets such as stocks, commodities, and ETFs with round-the-clock secondary-marketwhile making markets for tokenised assets in a capital-efficient manner when the underlying markets are asleep, perps could greatly improve the trading experience for tokenised asset investors, liquidity, they solve a slightly different problem and are less versatile. Counterintuitively, the lead taken by perps could ultimately prove a boon for tokenised RWAs. By allowing critical liquidity providers to hedge the risk accumulated in making markets for tokenised assets in a capital-efficient manner when the underlying markets are asleep, perps could greatly improve the trading experience of tokenised asset investors - increasing the appeal of the emerging technology. 

What are perps?
Despite being widely labelled perpetual ‘futures’, perps are not technically structured as futures, but rather as swaps. They are referred to as futures because they were invented to solve a similar problem: leveraged exposure to an asset with the ability to go short. However, they work very differently from traditional futures contracts, which have an expiry date, where the short party - those betting the price will go down - must deliver the physical asset (or its equivalent value in cash) to the long party - those betting the price will go up.

With traditional futures, the price of the contract converges towards the spot price as expiry approaches, otherwise there would be a simple arbitrage opportunity available. For example, if spot was above the price of an expiring futures contract, traders would simply take delivery of the asset at expiry and flip it for an easy premium on the spot market. Since most assets have several futures contracts with expiries ranging from a few weeks to a few years, you can plot a chart called a 'futures curve' that reflects where traders expect the spot price to be at certain future dates. Because the baked-in leverage makes them capital efficient and liquidity is deep, futures are predominantly used as instruments for hedging and speculation.

In contrast to traditional futures, perps do not have an expiry date; they are perpetual. So a different mechanism is required to anchor them to the spot price. And that mechanism is called the ‘funding rate’. The funding rate acts as an incentive for traders to correct the price. If the perpetual price rises above spot, for example, the funding rate turns positive and long positions are forced to pay a fee to shorts, incentivising them to close their positions and new shorts to open, forcing the price back to spot. If the perpetual price falls below the spot price, the same mechanism kicks in, but in reverse.

Perps, as we know them today, were first issued in 2016 by cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, co-founded by high-profile commentator Arthur Hayes. Starting with Bitcoin, BitMEX identified a strong appetite for round-the-clock leveraged exposure to cryptocurrencies - as well as the ability to go short - but found that traditional futures created major headaches for retail investors: rolling from expiring contracts into longer-dated ones was time-consuming and costly, and few investors wanted physical delivery. Perps became a huge success. The model was subsequently rolled out to other cryptocurrencies, and eventually to real-world assets (RWAs) like commodities and stocks. Leverage can be as high as 100x.

There are two key venues to trade perps: centralised exchanges (CEXs) and decentralised exchanges (DEXs). “Centralised exchanges typically serve users who prioritise simplicity, speed, deep liquidity, and a more guided experience. That includes many retail users, institutions, and market participants who value convenience, performance, and integrated services,” said a representative from Binance, the large CEX that recently launched ‘TradFi Perpetual Contracts’ for 24/7 exposure to RWAs, beginning with gold and silver before extending the offering to equities, ETFs and more recently energy commodities. CEXs like Binance offer more traditional financial market infrastructure like custody and settlement services.

On the other hand, “perp DEXs often appeal to users who prioritise self-custody, on-chain transparency, permissionless access, and deeper engagement with the decentralised ecosystem. These platforms can be attractive to more crypto-native users who are comfortable managing wallets and interacting directly with on-chain protocols,” the Binance representative told The InterSection. DEXs is where the explosive growth has been. Almost $8trn of perp value changed hands on DEXs in 2025, according to DefiLLama data, up from just $2.6trn the year before. The native token of leading perp DEX Hyperliquid, HYPE, is up 98% over the past year according to CoinMarketCap data, well ahead of Bitcoin which is down 16% over the same period - a sign of strong fundamental growth.

Decentralised perps go mainstream
Traditional finance players have taken note. S&P Dow Jones Indices recently licensed its rockstar S&P 500 index to Trade[XYZ] for a perp listed on Hyperliquid - the first example of a major benchmark being officially licensed for round-the-clock on-chain tradeability in perpetual form. "This collaboration demonstrates S&P DJI's commitment to meeting market participants where they are - bringing our trusted benchmarks into emerging digital trading environments while maintaining the institutional-quality standards that define our indices," said Cameron Drinkwater, Chief Product & Operations Officer at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Trade[XYZ] said its vision is to “bring the world’s most important markets on-chain,” describing the S&P 500 as a “natural starting point”. So we are likely to see more developments of this kind, where perps are issued on traditional assets and indices, serving as useful vessels for price discovery when those underlying markets are asleep. That is likely to provide plentiful opportunities to canny traders and market makers, able to take advantage of price dislocations and charge wide spreads for providing liquidity.

The InterSection recently considered whether tokenised RWAs which also trade 24/7 represented a historic opportunity for market makers, and concluded yes - they could be - but only if certain operational hurdles can be cleared and genuine demand to trade them materialises. Unlike tokens, perpetuals are leveraged instruments and therefore less punitive for constrained market-maker balance sheets. “A perpetual is very capital efficient - that is why they are taking off relative to tokenised RWAs. Once the capital inefficiency is solved, I think both of them will take off hand-in-hand,” said Marc Jansen, co-chief trading officer of Flow Traders, the Amsterdam-based liquidity provider.

This raises the possibility of a virtuous liquidity cycle in after-hours trading, where tokens and perpetuals can serve as offsetting instruments, enabling market makers to provide larger volumes and tighter spreads. We have seen a similar positive spiral unfold in the world of corporate bonds - by nature, thinly traded instruments - where new products and protocols like ETFs, portfolio trading and more recently credit index futures can be used to help market makers to price, hedge, and unwind the risk accumulated in their credit trading activities, boosting liquidity across the space.

Perps solve a different problem to tokenisation
If tokens and perps both provide 24/7 exposure to RWAs, but perps are more capital efficient, what is the point of tokenisation? "There are two ways to express the same conviction, but it really comes down to what you want to do with them," said Jake Ostrovskis, head of OTC trading at Wintermute, a digital asset market-making firm. "Perps are capital efficient but you have to pay funding costs for the leverage. With tokenised stocks, you can do all sorts of things: you can fractionalise them, borrow against them, put them in a liquidity pool, or use them to collateralise a trade. The use cases are similar but with quirks."

With slightly different use cases, the two are well set to grow alongside each other. "We do expect perp DEX activity to continue growing as on-chain infrastructure matures. Improvements in scalability, execution quality, user experience, wallet infrastructure, and cross-chain connectivity are making decentralised trading more accessible to a broader range of users," said a Binance representative. 

Binance expects perp activity on centralised exchanges to grow too. "We don’t see this as a zero-sum shift where one model replaces the other. Centralised exchanges will continue to remain a major part of global crypto trading because they provide deep liquidity, fast execution, intuitive user experiences, fiat connectivity, and customer support at scale. These features are especially important for newer users and institutions entering the space. We see users increasingly moving across both environments depending on their needs," the person added.

Room for both?
 Although perps and tokenised RWAs are to some extent competing products, there is certainly space for both in the toolkit of crypto native investors. The success of perps should ultimately aid the development of tokenised RWAs, because they will help liquidity providers to price and hedge the risk accumulated when trading tokens after hours - a crucial development if tokens are to deliver on their promise of versatile functionality and round-the-clock liquidity. 

Events on our radar

DigiAssets Connect Zurich, 16-17 June - Custody, banking, and institutional infrastructure – tickets HERE

European Blockchain Convention 12, Europe’s Deal Floor for Digital Assets. BARCELONA · 16-17 SEPTEMBER 2026 - tickets HERE