Tokenized stock trading surges 10,164%, but liquidity tells another story

Tokenized stocks trading on decentralized exchanges reached $48.7 billion over the past year, according to on-chain data. This is an increase of 10,163.7% from the previous 12 months. Uniswap was the leader in trading volume, having traded $17.1 billion across the different v3 and v4 pools.

The increase indicates that tokenized stocks are starting to become more than assets that simply exist on-chain. What is important now is to see if enough buyers and sellers are coming in to create a viable secondary market. Still, having a high trading volume figure alone doesn’t mean that ownership is guaranteed or that there is a lot of liquidity.

Volume, market cap, and holders are three different things

The figure of $48.7 billion shows the trading activity, but not the actual amount of the tokenized stocks in existence.

According to RWA.xyz, the distributed value of tokenized stocks (one part of the onchain equity market) is found to be $3.20 billion as of October 3. Distributed value is defined as the value of tokens that have been issued and distributed.

Tokenized stock DEX trading volume is up 10,163.7% YoY, with $48.7B traded over the past year

Uniswap leads with $17.1B in volume across v4 and v3 pic.twitter.com/rULbw2f4rS

— Token Terminal 📊 (@tokenterminal) October 2, 2026

Binance Research, on the other hand, relies on the broader concept of onchain equities, which has been estimated to have a market size of $4.43 billion as of September 15 after exhibiting a remarkable growth of 390.4% this year. Even by this measure, the amount of onchain equities is only 0.0029% of the $151.9 trillion estimated market value for listed equities.

According to Cryptopolitan, Token Terminal reported 4.3 million tokenized stock owners last September, which is nearly 43 times more than the number reported last year. However, these numbers are for blockchain addresses and not for verified persons, as one individual can hold many wallets.

High turnover, concentrated in a few tokens

The State of Tokenization report from Pantera Capital in September revealed that tokenized equity’s spot turnover was around 204.6% in June. This means that more than double the value of tokenized equities that were issued was traded during the month. However, Pantera warned that a high turnover rate for the whole category can be driven by just a few heavily traded tokens, while many others see very little activity.

That pattern shows up in Token Terminal data for the same one-year period behind the $48.7 billion DEX-volume figure. ETF-linked products account for 44.0% of trading by reference stock, followed by NVDA at 10.0% and SPCX at 7.3%. Looking at individual assets, QQQb alone accounts for 28.9% of DEX volume, well ahead of SPYx at 5.3% and NVDA at 4.9%.

In the case of derivatives, there was an even more considerable volume of activity. Equity perpetuals traded on Hyperliquid and Lighter were worth around $67.8 billion in June, compared to only $4.2 million in tokenized-equity spot trades. This means that many traders appear more interested in betting on stock-price moves than in actually owning the tokenized shares.

Why traders are moving on-chain

What makes tokenized stocks attractive is fairly simple. FalconX points to fractional ownership, near-instant settlement, potential 24/7 trading, and DeFi utility as key reasons for the growing interest.

As demand for tokenized-stock access has grown, exchanges have expanded their offerings. Kraken began offering tokenized stocks in 2025, followed by Bybit and OKX. Binance, on the other hand, launched bStocks in June 2026. Binance Research also found that the Capital Activation Rate for equities rose from 1.95% to 7.54% this year, with liquidity pools and lending accounting for most of the deployed value.

The SEC opens a narrow door

On September 17, the SEC issued a temporary Innovation Exemption allowing qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues to trade tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned automated market makers without registering as exchanges.

The relief comes with limits on symbols and volume, requires tokens to carry the same rights as equivalent shares, and expires five years after publication.

What the big-picture forecasts assume

Looking further ahead, Citi projects a $5.5 trillion tokenized-asset market by 2030 in its base case and estimates that moving 10% of US retail investors onchain could create about $2.6 trillion in tokenized-equity demand.

But an IMF analysis warns that tokenization can create risks around the legal link between a token and the asset behind it. That distinction could matter more as trading grows and investors eventually need to enforce ownership rights or exit their positions.

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