1. IMF Tokenized Stocks Study Finds Real Demand but a Thin Market
The International Monetary Fund said on October 11 that investors are using tokenized stocks, meaning blockchain-based versions of US shares, mainly for round-the-clock trading and very small purchases, yet the market remains far more volatile and less liquid than conventional equities. Its analysis puts tokenized equities at roughly $2.3 billion, a sliver of the global stock market.
The findings come from a chapter of the IMF's Global Financial Stability Report titled "Scaling Tokenization: New efficiencies and new vulnerabilities." The Global Financial Stability Report is the fund's regular assessment of risks to the world's financial system, and this chapter turns that lens on assets issued and traded on blockchains.
The overall message is balanced. The IMF sees genuine appetite among investors and sketches potential efficiency gains, but it describes a small and fragmented market whose legal, liquidity and settlement foundations have not kept pace with its growth.
Tokenized stocks deliver two benefits that crypto advocates have promised for years: trading that runs nearly all day and fractional ownership. The study shows both are being used, and it also shows what that use costs in price stability and depth.
2. What Did the IMF Examine?
A tokenized stock is a digital token on a blockchain that tracks the price of a share of a listed company. Holders can transfer it on-chain, and some platforms let customers buy portions of a share rather than whole ones.
For its analysis the IMF looked at the five most actively traded tokenized US equities. The group included shares tracking Tesla (TSLA), Nvidia (NVDA) and Alphabet (GOOG). The researchers compared their behavior with that of the underlying stocks and with benchmarks such as the Nasdaq 100 Index.
The sample spans both centralized and decentralized venues. Centralized venues are run by a single company that matches orders and holds customer accounts, while decentralized ones operate through smart contracts on public blockchains. Covering both gives a broader picture of how tokenized shares actually change hands.
Limiting the work to the most actively traded names means the results describe the best-case end of the market. Less popular tokenized shares are likely to trade even less often, a point that reinforces the IMF's emphasis on thin liquidity.
3. Who Is Trading Tokenized Shares, and When?
The usage data show a clear pattern. More than half of trading in the sampled tokens took place outside regular US market hours, and about 80% of trades involved less than one share.
The IMF interprets these figures as evidence that investors value two features in particular: access at any hour and a low cost of entry. In its reading, demand is not simply about the underlying technology but about conveniences that traditional markets do not offer in the same way.
Traditional exchanges in the United States operate for a limited daily session, with some extended trading around it. A token that trades continuously lets an investor react to news at night or on a weekend instead of waiting for the next opening. Fractional trades, meanwhile, allow someone to hold a stake in an expensive stock without paying for an entire share.
These habits distinguish tokenized shares from a simple copy of the stock market on a blockchain. The users the data describe are not necessarily large institutions moving sizable positions; the prevalence of sub-share trades points to retail-scale activity, where the ability to start small matters more than execution at scale.
Bitget chief executive Gracy Chen made a related point, saying that moving assets on-chain is only the first step. In her view the larger question is how efficiently the capital can be put to work once it is there.
4. Do Overnight Prices Reflect the Underlying Stocks?
Yes, to a meaningful degree, according to the study. The IMF found that price movements in tokenized shares overnight carry useful information about the stocks they track.
After US markets opened, more than 85% of the overnight move showed up in the conventional shares within five minutes. In other words, when the traditional market started trading, it largely adjusted to the level the tokens had already signaled.
This suggests that overnight tokenized trading plays a price-discovery role. It lets investors express views while the main exchanges are closed, and those views turn out to be informative rather than random noise.
The result does not mean that tokenized prices are always reliable. The same report finds the tokens swing more sharply than the real shares, so the information they carry comes with greater volatility.
5. How Large Is the Tokenized Market?
The IMF estimates the tokenized real-world asset market, often shortened to RWA, at about $65 billion as of July 31. Within that total, tokenized equities account for roughly $2.3 billion.
For comparison, the US securities industry trade group SIFMA puts global equity market capitalization for 2025 at just under $160 trillion. Measured against that figure, tokenized stocks are tiny, and the IMF characterizes the market as nascent.
Growth is nonetheless continuing. Bullish (BLSH), a Gibraltar-based crypto company, launched tokenized equity trading in August. Earlier in October, OKX and Intercontinental Exchange, the company that owns and operates the New York Stock Exchange, filed plans for a venue offering round-the-clock trading of tokenized US shares.
Other providers of tokenized stock trading include Coinbase Global (COIN), Kraken, Binance and Robinhood Markets (HOOD). The presence of established exchanges and brokerages alongside crypto-native firms shows how many different players are positioning themselves in the segment.
6. Why Are Tokenized Stocks More Volatile?
The IMF reports that tokenized stocks are about 1.5 times as volatile as equivalent shares on traditional venues, and that they are significantly less liquid.
Liquidity describes how easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. When few buyers and sellers are present, even a modest order can push the price noticeably, which produces larger swings. Tokenized shares trade among a much smaller group of participants than the underlying stocks do, so price changes are amplified.
Trading outside regular hours can add to the effect. When the main market is closed, there are fewer natural counterparties and fewer professional firms quoting prices, which can leave the order book sparse.
Investors weighing these products should therefore treat the lower entry cost and extended hours as trade-offs against wider price swings, since the same features that attract small traders also coincide with a shallower market.
Higher volatility and thin depth matter most to investors who want to trade in size or who rely on tokens as a stand-in for the real shares. They may find that the price they receive differs from what the conventional market would offer.
7. What Structural Problems Does the IMF Identify?
The IMF says the problem is not only that blockchain markets are small. In its assessment, tokenization needs enough issuers, investors, venues and compatible settlement assets before its promised savings in cost and time can be realized.
Today's market is split across private platforms, public blockchains, custodians and settlement tools that often do not work together. A token issued in one environment may not be usable in another, which divides liquidity into separate pools instead of concentrating it.
The potential upside is still described in concrete terms. Tokenization could cut the manual reconciliation of records, automate tasks such as dividend payments and speed up the movement of collateral between parties.
Those gains depend on scale and compatibility. Without a broad base of participants using interoperable systems, the efficiencies remain largely theoretical.
8. Which Risks Does the Report Flag?
The report warns that features designed to make markets faster could make shocks harder to contain. Automated margin calls and liquidations, collateral that moves between platforms, and trading that never pauses could together make it difficult to stop a disorderly move once it begins.
A margin call is a demand for extra collateral when a position loses value, and automated systems can enforce such demands instantly. If many positions are triggered at once, forced selling can feed on itself. Continuous trading removes the overnight and weekend breaks that traditional markets use to let participants reassess.
Another concern is the web of dependencies that tokenization can create. If the same token serves as collateral on several platforms, a loss of value or a technical problem in one place can ripple into others, and participants may not see the whole chain of exposure until strain appears.
For now, the IMF notes, the risks remain limited because tokenized markets are still small. That is the reason it argues for acting early.
Its recommendation is that legal rules on ownership, liquidity safeguards, links between systems and settlement arrangements should be developed before the market grows much larger. Establishing clear rights for holders and dependable settlement is far easier before large sums are involved than after a stress event.
9. What Comes Next for Tokenized Equities?
The immediate developments to watch are the proposed OKX and Intercontinental Exchange venue, whose filing was made earlier this month, and the continued expansion of platforms already offering tokenized shares.
As those venues and products multiply, the questions raised in the IMF chapter will become more pressing. Regulators and market operators will have to decide how ownership of a token relates to ownership of the share, how liquidity can be strengthened and how different systems can settle with each other.
The IMF has not tied its recommendations to a specific deadline. Its argument is that the window to build safeguards is open while the market is still around $2.3 billion, and that the work should be done before growth makes weaknesses costly.