ByCoinGape
Stock tokenization has been drawing serious capital and attention from the biggest names in both traditional finance and crypto. From Cathie Wood’s $10 million investment in stock tokenisation focused project Securitize to tokenized stock trading set to arrive on Telegram, leaders and projects across the industry are working on to bring equities on-chain.
Deemed as the hottest trend in web3, blockchains such as Solana, BNB Chain, and Ethereum have all joined the race. Stock tokenization specific projects such as Backed’s xStocks, Dinari are driving the introduction of tokenized stock trading via intergrations with major exchnage players – Gemini, Kraken etc.
But beyond the headlines and hype, how much real progress has the sector made?
Tokenized stocks are made to appeal on an idea of what traditional markets could do. This includes 24×7 trading, fractional ownership, instant settlement, and borderless access. By converting equity shares into blockchain-based tokens, stock tokenization is set to break down the barriers between global retail investors and the world’s top listed companies.
However, the real progress till now shows that despite the conviction of creating “Internet Capital Markets’, trend is still in its “test phase”.
An analysis by Block of Fame reveals that out of an estimated $100 trillion in global equity value, only $686.9 million worth of tokenised stocks exist on-chain as of writing. This puts the sector at a penetration rate of just 0.0007%.
Even in this market value, Exodus Movement Inc. – a publicly listed crypto wallet firm – dominates the on-chain stock value, accounting for over one-third of the total market. Even though Exodus is followed by Tesla xStock at $26.65M, this posts a starking picture – tokenized equity projects are still largely concentrated in crypto-native or token-friendly firms.
This does not seems bullish for a trend that Gemini Europe Growth Head Claudio Bedino said “will be followed by leading companies coming to list direct native on-chain shares.”
Put simply, the numbers are still a rounding error compared to the ambitions of the sector. James, Ethereum Ecosystem Head said in a X post, “Even if tokenisation reaches just 1% of global equities, that would translate into over $1 trillion of value moving on-chain – a scale that remains a distant milestone for now.”
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In terms of participation, RWA.xyz data shows the number of wallet addresses holding tokenised stocks has grown by 19% month-on-month, now standing at 95,990 holders. Yet only 36,951 of them were active in the last 30 days.
This suggests that the market remains dominated by a small circle of early adopters and institutions rather than retail traders.
Geographically, the concentration is even starker. 98.64% of tokenised stock value originates from issuers or entities based in the United States, followed by Switzerland (1.20%), Liechtenstein (0.16%), and the British Virgin Islands in negligible share.
However, Leo Foster CMO at LaqiraProtocol said that “Tokenized stocks are barely a blip today, but even a 1% shift from TradFi unlocks a trillion-dollar onchain wave. RWA is still in chapter one.”
Despite the gap in Stock Tokenization remaining wide, many industry voices see this small number as an opportunity rather than a setback. The limited scale today suggests there’s still ample room for emerging crypto businesses to build more efficient, compliant tokenization models.
As some experts point out, the broader real-world asset (RWA) trend is already gaining momentum beyond equities – with gold, whiskey, and other alternative assets increasingly being brought on-chain. Stocks, in that sense, are just the beginning.
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