Data & Insights: Cambrian Stock Explosion; No One Trades Crypto

Quick Take

• Data & Insights is a weekly series showcasing top charts from The Block’s Data Dashboard.
• This week, we’re taking a look at onchain equities and STRC stock. We’ll also look at prediction market fundraising, exchange volume, and Robinhood Chain’s continued growth

Cambrian Stock Explosion

• Tokenized stock market share has grown to 15%, up 3x from the start of the year. It’s been one of the few RWA categories to see growth as interest in onchain equity trading has ballooned. Total market cap sits around 2.8 billion at the time of writing. 
  • RWA transfer volume has also rocketed, doubling in August to $20 billion, up from $9 billion the month prior. 
  • Despite accounting for a relatively small share of the total RWA market, tokenized equities have drawn the most attention from retail investors and have become an entry point to onchain applications. 
• Three contenders have emerged in the race to bring stocks onchain. Ondo Finance, Binance (bStock), and xStocks have captured the majority of market share, collectively accounting for an impressive 77%. Ondo sits with the largest slice at $957 million while bStocks and xStocks command $622 and $600 million, respectively. 
  • All 3 leverage synthetic representations of underlying stock. While the specific mechanics vary, each aims to replicate the actual stock performance while giving the investor a derivative to transact or trade. 
  • Other builders such as Securitize and Superstate are working to bring actual equity onchain, where shares issued on the blockchain carry the same rights as conventional shares.
• Tokenized equity companies are choosing between first-to-distribute and onchain native tokenization. While synthetic stocks are being traded more frequently, they lack the full ownership, governance, and shareholder protections of the underlying asset.

Back to STRC-ing

• STRC has reclaimed its key $95 threshold after trading as low as $71 in June. As a refresher, when STRC is below its $100 target, management may recommend increasing the dividend. 
  • When the price is below $95, management recommends a 50+bps increase. When the price is between $95 and $99, management recommends a 25+ bps increase. The final price is calculated as an average of the last 5 trading days, so the August recommendation won't be coming for a few more weeks. 
  • The recommendation has generally been followed so far; Strategy has raised the dividend ratio on 9 occasions, and the dividend on STRC now sits at 12% or $1.2 billion annually. 
• Strategy has sold BTC over the past few weeks to shore up its cash reserves, now at $4.65 billion, which covers roughly 30+ months of dividends across its preferred portfolio. 
  • The concerns a few months ago about the sustainability of Strategy’s strategy caused panic among speculators, as a dwindling cash supply threatened a potential forced sale of BTC. Saylor has since signaled to markets that the company is willing to proactively sell BTC to raise cash and quell fears of STRC instability. 
  • This comes as counterintuitive to many investors. Strategy was touted as the Bitcoin company, raising dollars to buy Bitcoin and hold forever. Now, however, the company appears ready to sell Bitcoin to raise cash to fund a perpetual debt instrument. 

Stratopheric R(a)ises

• Against a backdrop of lackluster VC investment in crypto in the last couple of years, prediction markets, particularly Kalshi and Polymarket, have been standouts. 
  • Prediction markets allow users to “predict” binary outcomes of events across myriad topics and areas, including economics, finance, technology, sports, and politics. 
  • These companies have exploded in popularity as the two giants compete for mind and market share among the general public after both saw great success predicting the last US presidential election. 
• Funding for the category has grown tremendously as a result. Prediction markets raised an eye-watering $3.7 billion in 2025 and have already amassed another nearly $2 billion so far this year. 
  • The category raises have generally been dominated by Polymarket or Kalshi; combined, they account for nearly 100% of the category’s raises. The speed of their growth has been impressive, with both going from single- to double-digit billion-dollar valuations since 2025. 
  • The raises also show little sign of slowing, with Polymarket and Kalshi rumored to be looking to raise once more at $20 billion and $40 billion valuations, respectively. 
• The sheer amount of dollars being poured into prediction market giants reflects the crypto VC landscape. The money being invested in private markets is becoming increasingly selective, and the companies that have found product-market fit are capturing all the capital. 

No One is Trading Crypto

• The 7-day moving average (7DMA) of total spot volume across major CEXs fell to just ~$15 billion last Friday
  • While at face nominal value this might seem like a lot, it's actually the lowest volume it has been since October 2023, an almost THREE-year low
  • The decline in volume has been consistent for a long time now, as it is down 33% MoM and 80% YoY, an abysmal metric.
  • Monthly averages have declined in consistent increments throughout the year, with $42 billion in February, $30 billion in March, $26 billion in April, briefly stabilizing in May and June, before a collapse to $22 billion in July.
• All of this signals that the industry is clearly in a prolonged bear market as the lack of volatility and activity in crypto has disincentivized traders from trading crypto assets. 

Robinhood Chain TVL Up Only

• Total value locked (TVL) in Robinhood chain has continued to post record numbers, now standing at over $540 million, up over 45% MTD.
  • From this, tokenized RWAs on the chain stand at $32 million, a 120% MoM growth.
  • Despite the growth of both TVL and tokenized RWAs, the ratio between them is the interesting part, as RWAs accounted for nearly 1/3rd of total chain TVL on July 7, but just 6% today.
  • This means that since the launch of the chain, TVL grew roughly seven times faster than tokenized RWAs, despite Robinhood presenting tokenized equities as the marquee use case.
• Meanwhile, stablecoin market cap on the chain has reached ~$640 million, up over 22% MTD.
  • The bulk of this growth has come from USDe, currently at $286 million, up nearly 50% from the start of August.
  • On the other hand, the growth of USDG has stalled in comparison, stagnating at $330-350 million in the same period.
  • USDG is the house stablecoin and it dominated the chain's first week at 92.7% of supply
  • USDe now makes up 44% of the share of Robinhood chain’s total stablecoins, a monumental achievement considering USDG is the house stablecoin that made up 92% of the share at launch.