Tokenized equities could reach $349 billion by 2030 under Binance Research's base-case projection, a roughly 79-fold increase from the $4.43 billion on-chain balance recorded on September 15, 2026.

The forecast appears in "The RWA Activation Era," a report the research arm of crypto exchange Binance released on September 18, 2026. The document updates an earlier May 15, 2026 analysis and reframes the conversation from raw tokenization volume to actual on-chain deployment of those tokens.

Three scenarios for tokenized equities

Binance Research modeled three outcomes for 2030:

• Conservative case: $61 billion
• Base case: $349 billion
• Bull case: $987 billion

The spread reflects uncertainty about how quickly traditional financial infrastructure absorbs blockchain-based equity products. Tokenized equities represent 0.0029% of the $151.9 trillion global listed equity market as of mid-September 2026. Year-to-date growth has reached 390.4%.

The shift from issuance to activation

The report's central change is methodological. Rather than tracking only how many assets get tokenized, Binance Research measures whether those tokens enter on-chain financial applications: liquidity pools, lending markets, collateral arrangements.

Two metrics anchor the new framework. The Programmable Asset Ratio (PAR) measures the share of an underlying asset class brought on-chain. The Capital Activation Rate (CAR) measures what fraction of that on-chain value gets deployed in financial applications.

Equity CAR rose from 1.95% to 7.54% year-to-date, according to the report. Of deployed value, 65.4% sits in liquidity pools and 28.1% in lending markets.

What does the equity CAR jump signal?

A rising CAR means tokenized equities function less as passive digital representations and more as programmable collateral within decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The 7.54% equity CAR figure indicates DeFi venues are absorbing tokenized stocks faster than headline tokenization statistics suggest.

The CAR/PAR framework distinguishes between nominal tokenization and functional financial plumbing. An asset can sit on-chain at scale yet remain inert if no on-chain application references it. The equity CAR rise suggests decentralized finance protocols have begun treating tokenized stocks as usable financial primitives rather than as collectible representations.

On-chain equity deployment currently concentrates in automated market maker pools, where tokens provide trading liquidity for swaps between tokenized stocks and stablecoins. Lending markets trail at 28.1% of deployed value, suggesting tokenized equities have not yet become mainstream collateral for DeFi borrowing. The 7.54 percentage point CAR increase within roughly nine months implies an annualized trajectory of approximately 10 percentage points if the current rate persists.

The broader RWA picture

Equities form one slice of a larger real-world asset (RWA) market. Total on-chain RWA assets under management reached $34.18 billion by mid-September 2026, an 85.2% year-on-year increase. Tokenized RWAs across major asset classes remain around 0.01% of their underlying markets by PAR.

Equities at roughly $4.43 billion account for approximately 13% of total on-chain RWA. The 390.4% year-to-date growth rate for tokenized equities outpaces most other RWA categories in the dataset.

What should readers watch next?

Three indicators will determine whether Binance Research's projection materializes:

• Sustained upward movement in equity CAR beyond the current 7.54%
• Growth in lending as a share of deployed value, currently 28.1%
• New product launches that push tokenized equity balances meaningfully above $4.43 billion

The gap between today's $4.43 billion and the 2030 base case of $349 billion implies a compound annual growth rate requiring sustained institutional adoption, regulatory clarity in major equity jurisdictions, and continued DeFi liquidity growth across the next four years.