Author: a16z Crypto
Translator: Jiahua, ChainCatcher
Tokenized stocks are an entry point for the crypto industry into Wall Street. They are tokens running on the blockchain that correspond to real-world company stocks, ETFs, and index products.
Unlike traditional stocks, tokenized stocks can be self-custodied in wallets, transferred without permission, traded at any time, and can also be used as collateral in on-chain finance.
In the past two months, institutions such as Coinbase, DTCC, the New York Stock Exchange, and Robinhood have taken various actions, some moving trades on-chain, some establishing joint ventures, and others launching their own chains.
Over 5 times growth in one year, mainly driven by new issuances
As of the end of June, the total market capitalization of tokenized stocks was approximately 1.7 billion USD, up from 329 million USD a year ago, an increase of over 5 times. Among all tokenized assets (commonly referred to as RWAs), this is one of the fastest-growing categories.
The question is, how much of this growth comes from new issuances and how much comes from the increase in the underlying stocks themselves?
The accounting for stablecoins is straightforward; one token corresponds to one USD, with the circulation directly reflecting demand. Tokenized stocks follow the price of the underlying stocks, and the market capitalization figure cannot cleanly differentiate between "how many new tokens were minted" and "old tokens being repriced."
Existing evidence points towards new issuances. Today’s market cap indicates that over half comes from assets that were not on-chain a year ago. Most of the remaining part was also added to the chain recently, by which time the price changes of the underlying stocks over the past year had already largely occurred.
The structure of tokenized stocks is being reshaped
Although the market is new, its internal composition has changed significantly over the past year.
Crypto-related assets once dominated, with market cap share decreasing from 79% a year ago to 21% in June. This has been replaced by a category called "Others," consisting of hundreds of smaller assets, which has increased its share from 15% to 35%.
The remaining portions are also increasing. The share of tech giants with market caps of over 100 billion USD rose from 0.6% a year ago to 10.6% in June. ETFs and index products increased from 4.5% to 17.3% during the same period.
The fastest-growing segments are AI and chips. By June 2025, this category had a size of less than 1 million USD, accounting for 0.3% of the market, but a year later, it had risen to 15.5%.
In June, the monthly transfer volume of tokenized stocks reached 9.22 billion USD, compared to 53 million USD during the same period last year.
This metric counts all on-chain circulation, including transactions, transfers between wallets, and deposits into DeFi protocols as collateral.
Wall Street is accelerating its transition to on-chain
In the past month, DTCC completed the first on-chain production environment transactions of tokenized US Treasury bonds and stocks on Digital Asset's Canton Network. A more comprehensive tokenization service is planned to launch in October, at which point Wall Street will have a direct channel connecting to approximately 114 trillion USD in assets held by DTC.
In early July, Robinhood launched its own public chain, placing traditional markets, crypto assets, and real-world assets on the same open network.
On June 22, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), announced a joint venture with OKX to plan the offering of tokenized stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange, pending regulatory approval.
A week earlier, on June 16, Coinbase stated it would offer 1:1 fully backed US stock tokens to non-US users, along with dividends, complete shareholder rights, and 24/7 trading. Binance had launched its own version a few days prior.
Compared to traditional stocks, the size of tokenized stocks remains small, with the latter's monthly trading volume in the tens of trillions of USD range. But the trend is clear: more and more issuers and platforms are moving stocks on-chain, and this category is still expanding.
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