BitMEX said in a report on Thursday that commodity perpetual swaps were the fastest-growing TradFi trading segment in the first quarter of 2026, with weekly volume increasing 65,463% from $38.1 million to $25.0 billion.
The report indicated that silver, crude oil and gold contributed most to this augment. As of Thursday’s week, silver (XAG) had 34.8% of the tokenized commodities market share, followed by crude oil (CL) at 27.7%, gold (XAU) at 27.5%, and silver on Hyperliquid at 6%. report.
BitMEX said the March entry of crude oil added a fresh phase to the market, attributing the move to geopolitical tensions over Iran and broader demand for 24/7 exposure to commodities on crypto platforms.
The numbers point to a rapidly growing niche in cryptocurrency derivatives markets.
Brent crude oil has risen about 44% since the first U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28, from about $69 to more than $99 at the time of writing, According to to data from Trading Economics. Oil prices peaked at around $114 on Tuesday, the highest level since the conflict began.
Weekend dislocations resulted in an augment in the number of criminals involved in the trade of goods
The perpetrators of Onchain TradFi encourage traders to “speculate and hedge in real time against weekend geopolitical events such as the recent conflict in Iran,” Stephan Lutz, CEO of BitMEX, told Cointelegraph. “While the perpetual swap model will continue to provide significant market share in commodity trading due to its 24/7 nature, we are very skeptical about the tokenization of spot assets,” he said.
However, minting physical commodities on the blockchain is complicated by the “complex, arbitrary legal rules” in place in the legacy financial system, Lutz said, adding that onchain derivatives will continue to eat into the trading share of customary commodities until “legacy giants like CME” launch their own 24/7 trading systems.
Related: Cryptocurrency exchanges gain as the market for tokenized goods grows to $7.7 billion
In the broader market, the total market capitalization of onchain commodities fell 2.7% over the past 30 days to $7.34 billion as of Thursday, According to to the RWA.xyz data aggregator.
BitMEX which says the report shows that it launched its first perpetual swap in 2016 and currently offers over 20 TradFi contracts.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, introduced gold and silver in January. It offers contracts covering precious metals and tokenized shares. The report shows that the average daily volume of the Silver (XAG) contract during the quarter was $1.31 billion.
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