The line between crypto exchanges and brokerages is dissolving faster than most of the industry expected. A new report from CoinGecko, How Crypto Exchanges Are Reshaping Traditional Asset Trading 2026, published on 29 July, tracks a market that has gone from a niche experiment to a multi-billion-dollar asset class in about eighteen months — and that is now being led by US equities rather than gold.
From $1.41 billion to $6.59 billion
CoinGecko puts the combined market capitalisation of crypto-native traditional-asset products at $1.41 billion at the start of 2025. That figure peaked at $7.50 billion on 5 February this year before settling back to $6.59 billion by 30 June — an increase of about 367% across the period.
Because precious metals make up the bulk of that total, the shape of the curve largely mirrors gold’s run to a record high in early 2026 and the correction that followed. But the flat-looking first half of this year hides a genuine rotation: appetite for metals softened while US stocks were added to the mix and quickly gathered momentum.
Volume: one month in 2026 beat all of 2025
The trading data is where the shift becomes hard to miss. Combined spot and perpetuals volume for these products crept up through 2025, from $3.45 billion in January to $24.05 billion in December. Then the floodgates opened. January 2026 alone produced $87.58 billion. February produced $186.32 billion — comfortably more than the $135.47 billion traded across the whole of 2025.
For most of the period, precious metals were the single largest category. Metals volume climbed from $23.99 billion in October 2025 to $80.97 billion in January 2026, and topped out at $236.76 billion in March as gold set its all-time high. It then slid 48.2% to $122.59 billion by June as the metal came off its peak.
US stocks tell the more interesting story. They actually led the market in early 2025 — $3.08 billion of January’s roughly $3.4 billion total, almost entirely single-stock perps — before settling into a base of around $10.25 billion a month through late 2025 and dipping at the start of this year. The recovery was violent: $43.40 billion in May, then a 337% jump to $189.84 billion in June, enough to take the top spot from metals for the first time. CoinGecko attributes the surge to speculation around semiconductor names including Micron and SanDisk, plus anticipation of the SpaceX listing.
Open interest tells the durability story
Volume can be churned. Open interest is harder to fake, which is why the OI data may be the most consequential part of the report.
Across the six exchanges studied, open interest in traditional-asset perps grew from $60 million on 1 January 2025 to $4.67 billion on 30 June 2026 — a 77-fold increase, most of it this year. Positions are being held, not just flipped.
The same asset rotation appears here. US stocks overtook precious metals in open interest on 18 June 2026 and closed the half at $2.01 billion, or 43.1% of the total, against $1.69 billion (36.2%) for metals. Metals OI had already peaked at $1.98 billion on 27 May, tracking gold’s rally, while equities kept climbing — a reasonable proxy for where the market’s centre of gravity now sits.
Binance pulls ahead, but the leaderboard keeps reshuffling
Part I of the report compares six venues — Binance, OKX, Bybit, Bitget, Gate and MEXC — and the competitive picture is anything but settled.
In the early, low-volume phase, no exchange held the lead for long. MEXC briefly topped the table in February 2025 with 35.4% share. Gate took 38.2% in July 2025 off the back of US stock and global index spot listings. Bitget led with 34.5% in December 2025 after an early push into US stock perpetuals.
Binance only established a consistent monthly lead from January 2026, growing from $39.60 billion that month to $231.49 billion in June — a 58.9% share, more than the other five combined. MEXC scaled aggressively to hold second place from January through May, climbing from $17.84 billion to a peak of $91.12 billion.
June scrambled the order again as US equity volume spiked. OKX jumped to $53.00 billion and Bitget to $44.23 billion, both passing MEXC’s $38.68 billion. Bybit ($13.29 billion) and Gate ($12.45 billion) trailed.
Part II of the report shifts to the demand side, presenting findings from an MEXC global user survey covering 6,185 valid responses on why traders are migrating toward multi-asset platforms.
What it means for the region
For traders across Asia, the appeal of the format is fairly obvious. A perpetual contract on a US semiconductor stock, quoted in stablecoins and open around the clock, sidesteps both the brokerage account and the exchange holiday calendar. Whether regulators in the region’s major markets stay comfortable with that arrangement is a separate question — and probably the one that determines how far the second half of 2026 goes.
What the CoinGecko data makes clear is that this is no longer a side product. Exchange differentiation is increasingly a fight over who becomes the single gateway to every asset class, and the crypto-native venues have a meaningful head start on convenience.
Source: CoinGecko, How Crypto Exchanges Are Reshaping Traditional Asset Trading 2026. Figures cited are as reported by CoinGecko.