CEXs WILL REPLACE TRADITIONAL STOCK EXCHANGES Centralized exchanges are becoming far more than trading venues for digital assets. Traditional markets still operate around fixed sessions, jurisdiction-specific access, multiple intermediaries and settlement cycles that can take days. CEXs were built differently from the beginning with global distribution, 24/7 markets, near-instant settlement, and comparatively low execution costs. Now that stocks, commodities, Treasuries, and other real-world assets are moving onchain, that infrastructure is beginning to support much more than crypto. Indeed, the tokenized RWA market grew from roughly $5.5 billion in early 2025 to $25 billion by mid-2026, despite crypto falling about 28% and DeFi TVL declining more than 25% during the first half of the year, according to DeFiLlama. Monthly RWA spot volume expanded from around $1 billion to briefly reach $40 billion in Q1 2026. Meanwhile, RWA perpetual volume surged from just $230 million in early 2025 to $347 billion, with derivatives overtaking spot volume for the first time near the end of 2025. Binance accounts for roughly 35.9% of TradFi perpetual volume, with approximately $474 billion traded in 2026, followed by MEXC at 22.8% and Hyperliquid at 19.8%. That advantage appears to come from having the liquidity necessary to turn a listing into a functioning market. Binance averaged around $536 million of BTC perpetual liquidity within 1% of the mid-price in 2025, versus $202 million for OKX and $103 million for Bitget. That depth matters because tokenized assets require issuance, tight spreads, continuous counterparties, hedging activity, and reliable price discovery. While TradFi is gradually adopting blockchain infrastructure, CEXs are expanding into equities, commodities, tokenized funds, collateral, and DeFi. The two systems are converging—but increasingly on infrastructure that crypto exchanges spent the last decade building.(Ali Charts)