Tokenized equities — or tokenized stocks, as they’re more commonly known — show the inroads crypto is making into Wall Street. These are blockchain-based tokens that represent traditional equities such as corporate shares, ETFs, and index products.
Unlike traditional equities, tokenized stocks can be self-custodied in digital wallets, moved permissionlessly, traded at any time, and used seamlessly as collateral across onchain finance. In just the past couple months, Coinbase, DTCC, NYSE, Robinhood, and others have made moves here, ranging from processing trades onchain to forming new joint ventures to launching new chains.
The momentum shows up in the data. The market cap of tokenized stocks reached about $1.7 billion at the end of June, up from $329 million a year earlier — more than 5x growth. This makes tokenized stocks one of the fastest-growing categories of tokenized assets (which some refer to as real-world assets).
How much of that growth comes from new issuance versus price appreciation of the underlying stocks? Unlike stablecoins, whose circulating supply is a direct proxy for demand — one token, one dollar — tokenized stocks move with their underlying equities, so market cap does not cleanly separate the effects of new tokens minted and existing tokens repricing.
The evidence points to issuance though. More than half of today’s market cap sits in assets that weren’t onchain a year ago. And most of the remaining balances arrived mid-year — after much of the period’s price movement in the underlying stocks had already occurred.
While the market for tokenized stocks is new, its composition has already changed greatly in the past year:
Crypto-linked products once dominated the market, but their share by market cap has dropped to 21% (as of June) from 79% a year earlier. They have lost the top spot to the “other” category — a long tail of hundreds of smaller listings — that now makes up 35% of the market, up from 15% a year earlier.
The rest of the market is climbing too. Megacap tech — tech companies with a market cap around $100 billion or more — now make up 10.6% of the market by market cap as of June, up from 0.6% a year ago. ETFs and indices grew to 17.3% of the market in that same period, up from 4.5% a year earlier.
The fastest riser has been, unsurprisingly, the AI and chips category. The category vaulted from less than $1 million in June 2025 — 0.3% of the market by market cap at the time — to 15.5% of the market as of a year later.
Transfer activity is on the rise too. Monthly transfer volume for tokenized stocks reached $9.22 billion in June, up from $53 million last June — a more than 170x increase. This metric measures any onchain movements, such as trading, transfers between wallets, or collateral deposits into DeFi protocols.
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The institutional groundwork is now falling into place. In just the past month, DTCC processed its first live production trades of tokenized Treasuries and equities on Digital Asset’s Canton Network. (A full launch of the broader tokenization service is planned for October, giving Wall Street a direct on-ramp to the ~$114T in assets custodied at DTC.) At the start of the month, Robinhood launched its own chain on mainnet, bringing traditional markets, crypto, and real-world assets together on an open network. On June 22, the parent company of the NYSE announced a joint venture with OKX to make tokenized NYSE-listed stocks available to users, pending regulatory approval. And a week earlier, on June 16, Coinbase said it will offer 1:1-backed tokenized U.S. stocks to non-U.S. users, with dividends, full shareholder rights, and 24/7 trading. Binance shipped its own version days before.
The market for tokenized stocks is still a small one compared to traditional equities, which trade in the double-digit trillions per month. But the trend is clear: More issuers and platforms are bringing tokenized stocks online, and the category is growing.
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Robert Hackett is features editor and head of special projects at a16z crypto.
Ryan Holloway is a data consultant.
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