Tokenized stocks are blockchain-based tokens that represent shares in companies such as Tesla, Nvidia and Alphabet, letting investors trade around the clock and buy a fraction of a share. The International Monetary Fund now has the data to show the demand is real — and that the risks are, too. In its October 2026 Global Financial Stability Report , the IMF found that more than half of tokenized equity trading happens outside regular U.S. market hours and roughly 80% of trades are for less than one share, even as the same markets are about 1.5 times more volatile and far less liquid than the shares they track.
The chapter is the IMF’s first major empirical look at tokenized equities, and it lands as the market shifts from experiment to business line. Tokenized stocks now account for roughly $2.3 billion of a tokenized real-world asset market the IMF pegs at about $65 billion as of July 31, 2026 — still a small fraction of the global equity market, but one that exchanges are racing to serve.
What Are Tokenized Stocks?
Tokenized stocks are shares of a conventional company issued as programmable tokens on a blockchain. The underlying equity is typically held in custody while a token that mirrors its value is created on-chain, so the token can be split into tiny units and traded whenever the network is live. Issuers such as Ondo Finance and Backed Finance dominate the market, and their tokens change hands on both centralized exchanges and decentralized venues.
Venues have moved quickly to offer the products. Securitize recently put 12 U.S. equities onchain on Solana , and other platforms list tokens that track major stocks and indexes. The appeal is straightforward: an investor in any time zone can buy a slice of a high-priced share without waiting for a U.S. market to open.
What the IMF’s Data Shows
The IMF analyzed the five most liquid tokenized U.S. equities — tokens tracking the S&P 500, Nasdaq, Tesla, Google and Nvidia issued by Ondo and xStocks — across 11 centralized and decentralized venues, covering 365 trading days and more than two million five-minute price observations. Three findings stand out.
First, more than half of all trading occurred outside regular market hours, including weekends, which the IMF reads as evidence that investors value 24/7 access rather than the technology for its own sake. Second, about 80% of trades were smaller than one share, pointing to strong demand for fractional ownership from retail users. Third, overnight moves in tokenized shares carried real information: between 87% and 99% of the overnight return was absorbed by the underlying stock within five minutes of the traditional market opening.
The demand is broad enough that OKX and ICE have filed to launch round-the-clock tokenized stock trading in U.S. equities, joining Coinbase, Kraken, Binance and Robinhood in the market.
Why the IMF Still Sees Risks
Despite the demand, the IMF cautions that tokenized equities remain a small, fragmented and underdeveloped market. Realized volatility was about 1.5 times higher than for the same shares on traditional venues, and liquidity was markedly thinner: using a standard price-impact measure, the IMF found traditional markets the most liquid, centralized exchanges materially less so, and decentralized exchanges the least by a wide margin.
Part of the volatility gap reflects the fact that tokenized venues trade continuously, capturing price moves during low-volume overnight and weekend periods. The IMF also notes that the user base is dominated by smaller, retail-oriented participants rather than institutions, which deepens the liquidity shortfall.
More fundamentally, the report argues the market cannot scale without four fixes: legal certainty over ownership and insolvency treatment, consistent regulation, interoperability between private platforms and public blockchains, and settlement in widely accepted forms of money.
What Happens Next
The IMF stops short of calling tokenization a systemic threat, saying risks remain limited because the market is still small. Its policy prescription is a technology-neutral framework built on “same activity, same risk, same regulatory outcome,” alongside policy sandboxes, circuit breakers, liquidity safeguards for tokenized trading venues, and settlement in safe money.
For investors, the report is a reminder that 24/7 trading and fractional ownership are real improvements that come with thinner liquidity and sharper price swings than a conventional brokerage account. For the industry, the message is that the technology works well enough to show demand — and that the guardrails around it are now the main constraint on how far tokenized stocks can grow.
Frequently Asked Questions
They are tokens that represent a claim on an underlying share held in custody, so they track the share’s value but are traded and settled on a blockchain rather than on a traditional exchange.
Yes. The IMF found more than half of tokenized equity trading happens outside regular U.S. market hours, including overnight and on weekends.
The IMF estimates tokenized equities at about $2.3 billion of a roughly $65 billion tokenized real-world asset market, still a small slice of global equities.
Technology-neutral regulation under “same activity, same risk, same regulatory outcome,” plus sandboxes, circuit breakers, liquidity safeguards and settlement in safe forms of money.
Disclaimer: The information in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.