Who Really Holds Tokenized Stocks?

Analysis of the holdings addresses of the five major issuers reveals the true picture of on-chain token holders.

Written by: Arrakis Research

Compiled by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

As of September 13, 2026, Arrakis Research analyzed all holders of Ondo, xStocks, bStocks, Robinhood, and Backpack across four chains. Approximately $2.29 billion was measured on-chain, with a terminal user value of $2.22 billion. Over the past year, the supply of tokenized stocks has increased more than fivefold, with contracts rising from 60 to 2,344, covering 1,060 companies and funds. The funds are highly concentrated. Self-custody accounts for 46% of terminal user value, exchanges and custodians account for 44%, and protocol contracts account for 10%. 718 whale addresses hold $733.6 million, equivalent to 72% of the self-custody value held by 0.056% of addresses; of these, 64% are on Ondo Ethereum, with nearly half being long positions in funds like the S&P 500. Large retail investors prefer individual stocks, mainly focusing on Circle, Tesla, and Strategy, with quicker turnover. Small retail investors account for 98% of the addresses but only 6% of the value; many new entries on bStocks and Robinhood are meme coins.

Of the $80.5 billion traded on-chain, wash trading and automated trading account for more than half, with organic trading around $6.2 billion, but accelerating in the last three months. Wash traders hold almost no positions but contributed significantly to bStocks trading during the Binance Alpha points period. After the US stock market closes, spreads widen significantly. Ethereum is where large funds are located, with the highest average holdings and longest holding periods; BNB Chain reaches the most people, with three-quarters of the value held by exchanges and custodians. The Robinhood Chain invests more value into DeFi, with meme coin trading accounting for 36% of its stock token transactions. The SEC granted a five-year exemption on September 17, allowing exchanges to trade tokenized US stocks under certain conditions; Nasdaq, NYSE, and LSE are also advancing related arrangements. The report suggests that current growth mainly comes from the accessibility of overseas retail, and to reach a larger scale, primary issuance, dividend voting rights, and clear underlying asset claims are still needed.

The Rise of Tokenized Equity

In the past year, tokenized stocks have evolved from early experiments to one of the fastest-growing markets on-chain. Most products are backed by underlying stocks, held by custodians, and track listed shares. Unlike brokerage accounts, they can be traded around the clock, cover global investors, and gradually provide after-hours and weekend price discovery, while also directly connecting to DeFi. On the regulatory front, the CLARITY Act was stalled in the Senate on September 15, 2026; two days later, the SEC opened a conditional path for exchanges to trade tokenized shares; ESMA released an assessment the previous week. As the path becomes clearer, issuers are increasing, and a global holder base is forming. According to rwa.xyz, supply has grown more than fivefold in the past year, with eighteen platforms totaling $2.86 billion. As of September 13, the five issuers collectively hold approximately $832.6 million (Ondo), $589.6 million (xStocks), $652.7 million (bStocks), $173 million (Robinhood), and $26.5 million (Backpack); other platforms include Securitize, Reality, and Figure.

How the Market Forms

In the fifteen months since xStocks minted the first tokenized US stock, the stock token contracts of the five issuers have increased from 60 to 2,344, covering 1,060 companies and funds. In the past six months, the number of contracts has more than doubled, with 923 minted for the first time in June alone. Backpack has expanded the fastest on Solana, adding 30 contracts in the 13 days before September. Of the 1,060 underlying assets, most are provided by only one issuer; twelve are provided by all five, including SPCX, DELL, HIMS, IBM, and MSTR; AAPL, AMZN, and NVDA are among four of them. During the same period, the number of self-custody addresses holding tokenized shares increased from 1,076 to 1.28 million.

Nearly Half of Market Share Held by Exchanges or Custodians

On-chain, $2.29 billion was measured, of which $2.22 billion was terminal user funds, approximately $70.8 million belonged to market makers, routers, token contracts, launchpads, and cross-chain bridges. In terminal user value, self-custody accounts for 46% ($1.01 billion), exchanges or custodial wallets account for 44% ($974.2 million), and protocol contracts account for 10% ($231.5 million).

The proportion of self-custody largely depends on the issuer: Ondo is about 80%, bStocks is about 8%. Of the $626.6 million owned by bStocks holders, 83% is on Binance.

80% of Ondo is on Ethereum and BNB combined; the differences between the two are significant. xStocks is similarly split: most of the value on Ethereum is self-custody, while most on Solana is on exchanges. Binance Alpha custodial wallets hold $140.6 million of Ondo's BNB supply. Robinhood is not listed on exchanges, so there is no exchange custodial supply; most of its terminal user value is in protocol contracts, primarily between Uniswap and Lighter.

Trading Costs

Tokenized stocks are primarily traded through centralized exchange order books or on-chain liquidity pools, market makers / issuer quotes. Which is cheaper depends on the issuer, trade size, and the day of the week.

For Ondo and xStocks, small amounts are cheaper on centralized order books: a $100 round trip on MEXC costs 2 basis points, while its own quote is 12.8 basis points. Beyond $100, the order reverses: Ondo's quote can maintain the price under $20,000, while the centralized order book widens. For xStocks, the Bybit order book is the cheapest across all sizes.

After the US stock market closes, the liquidity of tokenized US stocks thins. After after-hours trading ends at 8:00 PM ET on Friday, Ondo's quote rises from 13.3 basis points to 23.1 basis points, and the centralized order book nearly doubles; xStocks' main on-chain path maintains weekday levels over the weekend.

During the weekdays, underlying shares can still be traded in overnight venues, but from 8:00 PM on Friday to 8:00 PM on Sunday, there are no trades or settlements. Market makers who buy tokens on Friday night must wait until Sunday to hedge or verify prices, so they may widen quotes or withdraw.

Both Ondo and Kraken documents indicate that spreads widen when the US stock market is closed; the BNB Chain market maker guide states that bStocks quotes may be unavailable. Filippo Armani, head of Dune Digital Asset Research, stated that Arrakis shows that spreads for tokenized stocks widen when the listed market closes, and market makers withdraw because they cannot hedge before Monday; perpetual stock positions are different, as positions remain open, and funding rates continue to accumulate, leaving a continuous record in the market.

How Much of the Trading is Organic

The five issuers collectively traded $80.5 billion: $34.4 billion on seven exchanges and $46.1 billion on-chain.

Of the on-chain trading, about 26% appears to be wash trading for rewards, and another 27% is automated trading. Wash trading refers to trading done to receive rewards based on trading volume: Binance Alpha points are tiered by trading volume, and wash traders often buy and sell repeatedly to cross thresholds.

Much of the automated trading resembles arbitrage, aligning on-chain prices with stock prices; in trades where both buyers and sellers can be recorded, the amounts traded in automated transactions are nearly equal. Organic trading refers to buying and selling driven by interest in the stocks themselves. After removing wash trading and automation, the trading gap between issuers narrows. On-chain organic trading is about $6.2 billion, accounting for approximately 14% of on-chain trading; wash trading and automation combined account for about 53%; another 33% comes from exchanges, infrastructure, and addresses that never held $10 at the end of the day. Organic trading is accelerating, with over half occurring in the last three months.

How Holders Are Classified

Self-custody addresses are classified by historical maximum positions and trading behavior: whales (over $100,000), large retail (between $10,000 and $100,000), and small retail (between $10 and $10,000).

Below them are wash traders and automated traders. The sixth category includes exchanges and custodians holding on behalf of clients. Approximately 1.1 million addresses with maximum positions below $10 are excluded from the picture, collectively holding about $1 million, accounting for 0.1% of self-custody value.

Whales Holding Over $100,000

Based on holdings and on-chain transactions: whales hold $851.1 million, with transactions totaling $2.94 billion; large retail investors hold $95.9 million, with transactions totaling $848 million; small retail investors hold $44.7 million, with transactions totaling $2.45 billion; those holding less than $10 hold $1.12 million, with transactions totaling $5.27 billion; wash traders hold $270,000, with transactions totaling $11.95 billion; automated trading holds $6.47 million, with transactions totaling $12.67 billion; exchanges and custodians hold $974.2 million, with transactions totaling $636.2 million; unclassified holdings amount to $14.5 million, with transactions totaling $573 million.

As of September 13, 718 whale addresses hold $733.6 million. 72% of the self-custodied value is held by 0.056% of addresses.

In June and July, the launch of bStocks, Robinhood, and Backpack brought in new whales, but over 40% of the whales from May have left, primarily from Ondo BNB. 91% of those who left held individual stocks rather than funds, compared to 64% of those who remained.

Most of the leavers from Ondo BNB entered in May, when the AI chip market started to surge, and Micron's stock price nearly doubled; during that month, the number of Ondo BNB whales increased by 65%, with the largest purchase from new entrants being Micron. By the cutoff date, 72% of these new whales had left. Ondo has a disproportionately high share among whales: 51% of whale addresses hold 76% of its value, with an average balance of $1.53 million, while the median for other issuers is $491,000.

Ondo Ethereum whales hold for longer, with 59% of positions still open after 30 days, and nearly half of the value is in funds, primarily in S&P 500 tracking products (IVV, SPY); most transfers occur through aggregators and protocols like CoW Protocol and 1inch, rather than minting.

About half of xStocks whales have traded on-chain, with a median of 62 transactions, while other issuers range from 5 to 36 transactions. Among identifiable whale wallets, about half of the trading times fall within European time zones. A significant amount of whale capital seems to be seeking broad exposure to the U.S. market for long-term holdings: 64% are in Ondo Ethereum, with nearly half being long-term positions in funds.

Large Holders with Transactions Between $10,000 and $100,000

As of the cutoff date, large retail investors have 3,499 addresses holding $105.8 million.

22% of their value is in two crypto companies: Circle (CRCL) and Strategy (MSTR), while the whale proportion is 9%. Since May, this segment has grown by 26%, primarily from new issuances in June and July.

In May, nearly half of large retail investors have been replaced, also related to the AI chip market; the proportion of leavers holding stocks like Micron is nearly double that of earlier holders.

The average holdings across issuers are similar, ranging from $28,000 to $34,000, primarily in single companies. Single companies account for 83% of the value, mainly CRCL, TSLA, and MSTR, with whales at 65%. xStocks large retail holdings have increased by one-third since May, surpassing the larger Ondo BNB at that time; it is also the only issuer where large retail holdings are significantly longer than those of whales, with 41% of positions still open after 30 days, compared to 33% for whales.

This group resembles individual investors seeking exposure to single companies, with a faster turnover.

Retail Investors with Transactions Between $1,000 and $10,000

As of the cutoff date, small retail investors have 187,556 addresses holding $5.28 million, accounting for 98% of the addresses in the three holding segments, but only 6% of their value.

Since May, the number of addresses has increased more than threefold, primarily from bStocks and Robinhood, with value growing by over three-quarters. Growth is still accelerating, with nearly 40% of small retail investors entering in September, slightly over half of whom are from Robinhood.

Ondo and xStocks were launched before June, with a 50% increase in addresses in this segment, but only a 13% increase in value; 30% of small retail investors from May have left, with those entering during the AI chip market leaving at nearly double the rate of earlier holders.

The average holdings on bStocks and Robinhood are about $150, while Ondo and xStocks average about $520, many of whom seem to have entered through meme coins. On the BNB Chain, Flap meme coins distribute to holders via bStocks: at least one-third of small holders have received it at least once, and the four tokens held most widely are also the four that Flap distributes the most. On Robinhood Chain, meme coins are often priced in stock tokens, with nearly three-quarters of small holders having held them. On Ondo Ethereum, bStocks, and Backpack, small retail investors close their positions the fastest; on Robinhood, they hold the longest.

On Ondo and xStocks, they resemble individuals making small purchases of single companies; on bStocks and Robinhood, they are a newer, larger crowd often holding alongside meme coins.

Growth, Holdings, and Transactions by Segment

The smallest holders are increasing the fastest, while funds remain in the hands of whales.

In the third quarter, as of September 13, the segments with the most growth are all bStocks, Robinhood, and xStocks.

Single companies are the largest holdings in each segment, but whales hold about ten times the amount in funds compared to large and small retail investors combined.

Among most issuers, whales trade on-chain most frequently.

In total across the three segments, issuers average about 40% of their holdings still open after 30 days.

We estimate the location based on whether wallet trading times fall within Asian, European, or U.S. working hours, only counting wallets with at least 48 recorded transactions. In every time window we tested, identifiable whale wallets skewed towards Europe.

Wash Traders and Automated Trading

These two groups hold almost no positions but contribute a large portion of on-chain transactions.

Automated trading can often be identified solely by patterns, such as trading frequency, or buying and selling the same token in the same transaction. Wash trading, however, often requires knowledge of motivation. Wash trading becomes identifiable only when known incentives exist, as trades arranged around rewards leave patterns. Within the scope of this report, we identified that the only incentive for recognizing patterns is the Binance Alpha points, which appeared on bStocks and Ondo BNB, so wash trading under other incentives is likely to be missed. The complete methodology can be found in Section 1.4 of the data description.

Addresses that appear to be wash trading contributed over a quarter of all on-chain transactions, yet their holdings account for only 0.01% of the value. They generated $11.95 billion in transactions through at least 32,853 addresses, almost all on bStocks.

On bStocks, they entered with the points activity and left with the activity: 95% made their first transaction on or after July 7, and 91% completed it within three weeks; 56% made their last transaction on August 7, the day before Binance reduced the bStocks reward multiplier. No other group left in sync with them: the next highest proportion of those who stopped trading that day were large retail investors, at only 1.4%.

8,084 automated trading addresses generated $12.67 billion in on-chain transactions, with holdings of $6.47 million. Automated trading appeared across all issuers. Some of this may be wash trading behavior that this report failed to identify.

Automated traders' transactions are about 2,000 times their holding value, while wash traders are even higher; whales are about 3.5 times.

Exchanges and Custodians

The largest holders in this market are not individuals.

Among all five issuers, the exchanges and custodial wallets we can identify hold $974.2 million in end-user value, nearly equivalent to the total value of all self-custodied wallets.

Binance holds 68% of this in BNB, through two products: its spot exchange wallet (almost all BStock) and the Binance Alpha custodial wallet (almost all Ondo BNB).

These wallets hardly engage in on-chain trading. Each wallet holds funds for many clients, and their owners cannot be distinguished on-chain. This is the only large group that this report cannot analyze in detail.

Chains and Issuers

Solana

Solana is one of the earliest places for tokenized stocks to take root globally. xStocks launched in June 2025, growing to $56 million and over 7,000 self-custodied wallets holding no less than $10 within two months. By September 1, it accounted for about 95% of the value of issuers in this report, before Ondo entered. After the market expanded, Solana still accounts for about 23%.

xStocks, issued by Backed Finance, is now part of Kraken's parent company Payward and has launched alongside Kraken and Bybit, accounting for 95% of the value related to Solana. Its whale transactions on-chain exceed those of other issuers. According to Allium, 63% of the tokenized stock trades on this chain occur outside regular trading hours for U.S. stocks, with 17% on weekends. Elton Shehdula, head of research at Allium, states that these figures are significant, as Solana accounts for about one-third of the tokenized stock trades on-chain.

Backpack issues its own tokenized stocks through Backpack Securities, launching with two tokens on June 12 and reaching 44 by the deadline; in collaboration with Sunrise, 30 new tokens were added in the 13 days leading up to September, making it the fastest in this report. After four days of trading, a single day saw $78 million in transactions; by the deadline, on-chain transactions totaled $1.6 billion. xStocks has begun listing assets beyond U.S. stocks, including Tencent, AIA, BYD, and the Italian private company Bending Spoons.

Ethereum

Ethereum is currently where the large funds in tokenized stocks are located. Ondo will launch tokenized stocks here in September 2025, with Ethereum currently accounting for 30% of the end-user value analyzed in this report. Holders here are the largest among all chains: each address that has ever held tokenized stocks averages $17,023, which is over twelve times that of BNB Chain, the second highest. The holding period is also the longest. On Ondo Ethereum, 52% of positions remain open after 30 days, the highest among the analyzed issuers.

Ondo Stocks is the largest issuer on Ethereum, accounting for three-quarters of the end-user value on that chain. Its tokens are backed by shares held by registered brokers and trust companies in the U.S. Qualified investors outside the U.S. can create and redeem directly with Ondo at Ondo's own quotes, starting at $1. Others can buy through wallets and exchanges: MetaMask and Ledger provide these tokens within their wallets, while 1inch, CoW Protocol, and Uniswap handle routing transactions.

Ondo Ethereum carries most of the whale funds in the market. Its whales hold $470 million, accounting for 64% of the total whale value in this report, averaging about $2.5 million per whale. Of this, 44% is in Safe multi-signature wallets, a setup common among funds, vaults, and other professional holders.

Ondo states: "Liquidity is the prerequisite for the scalable operation of tokenized stocks. Ondo Stocks is the first to adopt an instant liquidity model, accessing the depth of traditional markets, allowing us to support hundreds of tokenized stocks and ETFs while enabling users to trade large volumes with minimal slippage. Arrakis's findings prove this scalability: from $100 to $20,000, the bid-ask cost basis remains stable. Bringing Wall Street on-chain means bringing its liquidity on-chain as well."

Tokenized stocks are also beginning to be used in DeFi on Ethereum. As of the deadline, Euler's vault holds $5.2 million in xStocks tokenized Strategy preferred stock STRC; Morpho holds $600,000 in xStocks S&P 500 tokens as collateral. Pendle also holds $13.1 million in the same preferred stock, trading the principal and yield tokens separately. Ondo tokens have been accepted as collateral by Morpho and Euler since February 2026.

BNB Chain

BNB Chain is the ecosystem with the most reach for tokenized stocks. Here, over 187,000 addresses have held $10 or more, surpassing the combined total of Solana and Ethereum; in the three months leading up to the deadline, this chain also saw the most new holders. It also holds the largest market share, at 41%, with three-quarters on exchanges and custodians, primarily Binance.

bStocks is issued by Binance's BTech Holdings and became one of the first tokenized securities on the Abu Dhabi Financial Regulatory Authority's official list in June. It launched with five trading pairs, increasing to 74 by the deadline; within ten days, it appeared on PancakeSwap, Trust Wallet, Aster, and Venus.

Binance states that over 90% of bStocks users are in emerging markets, with 44% being Gen Z. Most holders here return repeatedly: among bStocks holders with over $10, 59% have been active for five days or more. Among holders who entered various issuers in the same week in June and July, the proportion of bStocks holders remaining active two months later is among the highest.

Ondo reaches the widest audience on BNB Chain, having launched in October 2025. Binance Alpha custodial wallets—where tokens bought from Binance account balances are stored—hold 51% of Ondo's value on this chain, trading only at Ondo's own quotes. Addresses holding over $10 in Ondo average $1,157 here, compared to $26,581 on Ondo Ethereum.

Robinhood Chain

Robinhood Chain is the fastest-growing platform for tokenized equity and is where some of the most notable innovations are happening. Robinhood opened its own blockchain to the public on July 1, 2026, launching a series of new stock tokens. By the deadline, over 133,000 addresses held tokens worth $10 or more. In just the first 13 days of September, over 50,000 new small holders joined, more than double that of any other issuing platform.

Robinhood stock tokens are issued by Robinhood Assets (Jersey), with each share backed by a share held by Alpaca Securities, sold through the Robinhood wallet in over 120 countries outside the U.S., with on-chain trading available 24/7.

Holders with at least $10 on average hold over six different stock tokens, while bStocks holders average four and a half, primarily from meme coins priced in tokenized stocks. Among addresses that have held stock tokens, one-third have traded them.

This chain has the highest proportion of value allocated to DeFi: 72% of the end-user value is in protocol contracts, compared to 13% for Solana. Within ten weeks of launch, stock tokens have become collateral, yield, and leverage. Uniswap pools hold 42% of the end-user value on this chain; Morpho accepts stock tokens for lending, with about $2 million deposited by the deadline.

Related products include: Arcus (dYdX Labs) does not charge Arcus fees for around 200 stock token markets and packages leveraged positions into holdable tokens; Pendle trades Robinhood's NVDA and PFE as separate principal and dividend tokens; Lighter has accepted SPY stock tokens as perpetual collateral since July 19, followed by USO; Flap launched meme coins paired with stock tokens and can distribute those stock tokens to holders, funded by taxing meme coin trades. By the deadline, over 133,000 addresses had held at least $10; in just the first 13 days of September, over 50,000 new small holders joined, more than double that of other issuers.

Looking Ahead

Meme Coins

The Robinhood Chain mainnet opened to the public on July 1. Within two weeks, Long and the subsequent Flap allowed creators to price new meme coins using Robinhood stock tokens instead of ETH, SOL, or USDC. Buyers' dollars are often converted into stock tokens in a single transaction before being exchanged for meme coins, with stock tokens remaining in the pool. On BNB Chain, Flap and Four.meme began pairing meme coins with bStocks in late July.

On Robinhood Chain, 51,903 meme coins priced in stock tokens and 56,341 pools emerged within three months; by the deadline, meme coin trading accounted for 36% of the stock token transactions on this chain: $3.5 billion worth of stocks were traded as meme coins, in addition to $6.2 billion in other transactions on this chain.

96 stock tokens (before the additions in mid-August) were each priced in at least one meme coin, with the number of meme coin pools being over eight times that of pools paired with stablecoins or Ethereum; Nvidia appeared in 13,052 meme coin pools. Uniswap v4 holds over one-third of the value of Robinhood stock tokens, including 54% of the circulating volume of S&P 500 tracking products on-chain and 35% for Nvidia.

As of August 18, Flap meme coin has distributed bStocks to 80,910 addresses, with 78% still holding some as of September 13: 3,258 still hold $100 or more, 60,113 hold less than $100, and 17,539 have emptied their holdings.

Four.meme minted its own stock tokens, with over $2 million in minting applications within hours of its launch on September 8. About one-fifth (22%) of the trading volume of the chain's stock tokens occurred on Saturdays or Sundays. For issuers, meme coins serve as an entry point: nearly three-quarters of small holders on Robinhood have previously held meme coins, and at least one-third of small holders received Flap distributions.

Innovation

The most noteworthy aspect of the tokenized stock market may be what is built on top of it. Developers have turned stock tokens into collateral, leverage, yield, and a basket of products; on-chain markets are now even beginning to price them before companies go public. Most of these have only a few weeks of history, are still small in scale, but are developing rapidly.

Stock tokens are no longer just something to hold; they can also be used to borrow money. Shares in a brokerage account typically can only be collateralized by the broker holding them, and only under that broker's terms. Tokens tracking shares can be deposited into any lending market or exchange that accepts them.

Leverage in stocks used to mean margin accounts, with terms set by brokers, or buying leveraged funds through brokers. Leveraged tokens embed leverage within the tokens themselves. Holders can keep them in their wallets, trade them around the clock, and use them in other protocols.

Traditionally, shares of private companies change hands in the secondary market, often as requests for shares held by special purpose vehicles; in the U.S., these markets are generally only open to accredited investors. Once requests are tokenized, they can be transferred on-chain, allowing access to much smaller amounts in markets with minimum thresholds of $10,000 or higher.

Shares held at brokers earn dividends, while income from lending out shares is subject to the broker's terms. Stock tokens can be deposited into vaults and exchange products, which pay returns on those products.

A basket of stocks used to require a fund to package them. With tokenized shares, a basket can be bought in a single transaction and placed in an account controlled by the buyer, without the need for a pooled fund.

Almost all tokenized stocks are closed to U.S. investors, as each issuer has its own account opening and qualification checks, so applications wishing to offer multiple products must connect separately.

Outlook

On September 17, 2026, four days after the deadline, the SEC granted a five-year exemption allowing venues to trade tokenized U.S. stocks without registering as exchanges. Venues must publish a notice on their website 30 days before opening, disclose contracts on a permissionless ledger, maintain access permissions, and halt trading when the main exchange halts. They can trade up to 75 of the largest stocks and funds, with a limit of 0.25% of their average daily trading volume for each; additionally, they can trade up to 250 other assets, capped at 2.5%.

The order also exempts a company from registering as a dealer when providing liquidity to venues in the form of its own capital and tokenized stocks.

The exemption covers shares tokenized by the company itself or unrelated third parties; venues can only list tokens when the tokens have the same dividends, voting rights, and liquidation requests as the shares. Among the five issuers measured in this report, four explicitly state in their own documents that their tokens do not carry shareholder rights: Ondo Stocks, xStocks, bStocks, and Robinhood.

The exemption opens a venue: it can list tokenized U.S. stocks without becoming an exchange; companies can quote on it using their own capital without registering as dealers. A qualifying structure is to have transfer agents record the shares themselves on-chain, making the tokens the registration entries. Superstate's Opening Bell has handled Galaxy, Forward Industries, and Exodus in this manner. It has 84 token holders; in the thirty days leading up to the deadline, no shares transferred from one holder to another.

In Europe, tokenized shares remain financial instruments under MiFID II and are not covered by MiCA. The DLT pilot regime allows venues to test trading and settlement of tokenized shares for companies with market capitalizations below €500 million; the European Commission proposed to expand this regime on December 4, 2025. Abu Dhabi regulators approved Ondo's tokenized stocks for trading on Binance's regulated venue in March 2026 and approved BTech's bStocks prospectus before its listing in June. Singapore's regulation of tokenized shares is identical to that of their non-tokenized counterparts.

One of the most notable impacts of a regulatory regime favorable to tokenized stocks is that existing institutions are moving onto blockchain rails.

Nasdaq received SEC approval on March 18, 2026, to trade tokenized shares of Russell 1000 stocks and ETFs tracking major indices on its existing order book. Trading will begin after DTC's tokenization service is open and Nasdaq has given members 30 days' notice; DTCC plans to launch in October 2026. At that time, tokenized shares will trade on the same order book as regular shares, with the same rights; DTC-eligible participants will flag orders for settlement in tokenized form. Settlement will still occur through DTC on a T+1 basis.

The New York Stock Exchange announced on September 23 that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Blockchain.com to distribute tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on its yet-to-launch digital venue, pending regulatory approval. Its exchange has also submitted DTC-based rules similar to those of Nasdaq.

The London Stock Exchange stated on September 1 that it plans to list and trade xStocks on LSE 24 in 2027, pending regulatory approval.

Weekend trading is the clearest advantage of this market over listed markets. Extended hours approved for listed exchanges still stop on weekends; however, the SEC's exemption on September 17 did not impose trading time restrictions on on-chain venues. If existing institutions achieve seven-day trading, this advantage will narrow, and the rationale for holding tokens instead of shares will also diminish.

We simulate the potential position of this market by the end of 2027 based on three scenarios over the initial fifteen months.

Not all respondents believe tokenized stocks are mainstream. Dean Khan Dhillon, head of growth at rwa.xyz, told us that most growth so far has come from accessibility: for example, investors in Asia and Latin America can now hold exposure to U.S. stocks on-chain, which is operationally difficult or impossible through traditional brokerage channels. The first wave consists of retail investors wanting exposure who do not care whether the tokens are recognized by the companies, whether they pay dividends, or whether they carry ownership.

He told us, "Growth in the next 12 months will still come from the same accessibility logic," making it likely that the market will reach "at least tens of billions of dollars." "Getting from there to a trillion is another matter. It requires multiple investor profiles and more serious participants and quasi-institutions; they care about things that retail has long been willing to overlook: primary issuance, dividends, voting rights, and clear requests on the underlying assets." He is referring to the entire market. Covering only the five issuers measured in this report, and only including self-custodied addresses holding $10 or more: $892 million of the $2.22 billion terminal user value on September 13.

He sees a larger opportunity in the private market, where clearly legally packaged private credit delivered on-chain is the obvious next step. "The buyers here are not retail wallets in Asia," he said. "I expect the buyers to be fund treasuries sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in stablecoin reserves," aiming for yields above tokenized treasuries.

Dinari, as an SEC-registered transfer agent, buys real shares through its FINRA member broker-dealers, with third-party brokers holding them, issuing tokenized shares backed by real shares, covering 724 names, including the full S&P 500, aimed at accredited U.S. investors and over 85 other jurisdictions, with tokens designed to carry voting rights, dividends, and corporate actions; U.S. retail will open in August 2026. Some respondents believe the bigger opportunity lies in the private market, where on-chain delivery of legally packaged private credit is the obvious next step; buyers are expected to be fund treasuries holding hundreds of millions of dollars in stablecoin reserves, targeting yields above tokenized treasuries.

The report simulates based on the observed fifteen-month path, by December 31, 2027, the median of addresses holding over $10: bear market scenario approximately 1.32 million, baseline approximately 1.98 million, bull market approximately 2.5 million; corresponding median holding values approximately $4.26 billion, $6.24 billion, $7.81 billion; cumulative on-chain trading median approximately $437 billion, $709 billion, $1.03 trillion. The upper limits assume that ultimately 0.5%, 2.0%, and 8.0% of global retail investors hold tokenized stocks. These are simulations, not predictive commitments.

Note: Data as of September 13, 2026, covering five issuers: Ondo Stocks, xStocks, bStocks, Robinhood, Backpack, across four chains: Ethereum, Solana, BNB Chain, Robinhood Chain, with an on-chain measured scale of $2.29 billion. Contributors include rwa.xyz, CoinList, Dune, Allium, CoinGecko, RWA Foundation, Green Dots Research, @ZeusRWA, @stacy_muur.