a16z Crypto: Three Charts to Understand the Development Trend of Tokenized Stocks

Author: a16z Crypto

Compiled by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher

Tokenized stocks are an entry point for the crypto industry into Wall Street. They are tokens running on the blockchain that correspond to real-world company stocks, ETFs, and index products.

Unlike traditional stocks, tokenized stocks can be self-custodied in wallets, can be transferred without permission, can be traded at any time, and can also be used as collateral in on-chain finance.

In the past two months, institutions such as Coinbase, DTCC, the New York Stock Exchange, and Robinhood have taken various actions, some moving trading on-chain, some establishing joint ventures, and some launching their own chains.

Over 5 Times Growth in One Year, Mainly Driven by New Issuance

As of the end of June, the total market capitalization of tokenized stocks was approximately $1.7 billion, up from $329 million a year ago, an increase of over 5 times. Among all tokenized assets (commonly referred to as RWA), this is one of the fastest-growing categories.

The question is, how much of this growth comes from new issuance, and how much comes from the appreciation of the underlying stocks themselves?

Stablecoins are easy to calculate; one token corresponds to one dollar, and the circulation directly reflects demand. Tokenized stocks follow the price of the underlying stocks, and the market cap figure does not cleanly distinguish between "how many new tokens were minted" and "old tokens being repriced."

Existing evidence points to new issuance. Today’s market cap shows that over half comes from assets that were not on-chain a year ago. The remaining portion mostly consists of assets that went on-chain only mid-year, by which time the price fluctuations of the underlying stocks for that year had already played out.

The Structure of Tokenized Stocks is Reshaping

Although the market is new, its internal composition has changed significantly over the past year.

Crypto-related assets once dominated, with their market share dropping from 79% a year ago to 21% in June. Replacing it is the "Others" category, composed of hundreds of smaller assets, whose share increased from 15% to 35%.

The remaining portions are also on the rise. The share of tech giants with a market cap over $100 billion increased from 0.6% a year ago to 10.6% in June. ETFs and index products rose from 4.5% to 17.3% during the same period.

The fastest-growing segments are AI and chips. In June 2025, this category's scale was still under $1 million, accounting for 0.3% of the market, but a year later it had risen to 15.5%.

In June, the monthly transfer volume of tokenized stocks reached $9.22 billion, compared to $53 million in the same period last year.

This metric accounts for all on-chain circulation, including trading, transfers between wallets, and deposits into DeFi protocols as collateral.

Wall Street Accelerates On-Chain

In the past month, DTCC completed the first production environment transactions of tokenized U.S. Treasuries and stocks on Digital Asset's Canton Network. A more comprehensive tokenization service plan is set to launch in October, at which point Wall Street will have a direct channel to access approximately $114 trillion in assets held by DTC.

At the beginning of July, Robinhood launched its own public chain mainnet, placing traditional markets, crypto assets, and real-world assets on the same open network.

On June 22, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), announced a joint venture with OKX, planning to offer tokenized stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange to users, pending regulatory approval.

A week earlier, on June 16, Coinbase announced it would offer U.S. stock tokens fully backed 1:1 to non-U.S. users, including dividends, full shareholder rights, and 24/7 trading. Binance launched its own version a few days prior.

Compared to traditional stocks, the volume of tokenized stocks is still quite small, as the latter has monthly trading volumes in the hundreds of trillions. But the trend is clear: more and more issuers and platforms are moving stocks on-chain, and this category continues to grow.