IMF Report Highlights 24/7 Trading and Retail Demand for Tokenized Stocks as Wall Street Heavyweights Move In

Tokenized equities may still represent a relatively small and concentrated niche within the broader financial ecosystem, but the traders driving this emerging market are decidedly refusing to keep traditional Wall Street hours.

According to the International Monetary Fund’s latest Global Financial Stability Report, more than half of all tokenized equity trading activity now takes place outside of regular U.S. market hours. This around-the-clock engagement highlights a structural shift in how digital asset investors interact with traditional equity exposures, pointing to robust global demand for continuous access to major corporate shares.

The IMF’s comprehensive study examined the five most liquid tokenized U.S. equities currently available across digital asset markets—including blockchain-based tokens tracking corporate heavyweights like Tesla, Nvidia, and the S&P 500 index—across 11 distinct trading venues over a continuous 365-day period. Among the key findings of the report is that roughly 80% of all tokenized equity trades involve less than a full share. This pronounced fractional ownership dynamic underscores strong, sustained retail demand from market participants who prefer buying bite-sized portions of high-value equities using digital assets.

These blockchain-based instruments function as digital tokens designed to track the underlying shares of publicly traded companies. While the market remains in its relative infancy, the IMF’s data suggests that pricing activity occurring entirely onchain carries genuine macroeconomic and corporate information. When traditional stock exchanges finally reopen for the trading day, conventional shares absorb anywhere from 87% to 99% of the overnight price movements that their tokenized counterparts had already established while traditional markets were closed.

Despite this efficient price discovery mechanism, the IMF report makes it clear that tokenized equities currently come with significant structural drawbacks. The study revealed that tokenized equities were roughly 1.5 times more volatile than their underlying traditional stock counterparts. Furthermore, they proved to be considerably less liquid, particularly when traded on decentralized exchanges. On these decentralized venues, tokenized asset prices frequently strayed much further from traditional market valuations than they did on centralized platforms.

Scale and concentration remain defining characteristics of this nascent market. The entire global tokenized equity sector is currently valued at approximately $2.3 billion. Within that small footprint, issuance is heavily concentrated: platforms like Ondo Finance and Backed Finance’s xStocks account for more than 70% of the total market capitalization. According to the IMF, both issuers primarily offer synthetic tokens that provide investors with price exposure to major equities rather than direct, legal share ownership.

Given the early stage of development and the relatively modest scale of the sector, the IMF emphasized that its empirical findings should be interpreted with a degree of caution, noting that systemic risks to the broader traditional financial system remain limited for the time being. However, the international financial institution urged global regulators to proactively consider implementing specialized circuit breakers tailored for 24/7 trading environments. It also recommended that regulatory bodies monitor the growing operational and financial linkages between decentralized tokenized markets and traditional financial infrastructure more closely.

This warning builds upon earlier statements from the IMF issued earlier this year, when the organization cautioned that the rapid expansion of tokenized finance and stablecoins could potentially amplify liquidity crunches and financial crises under adverse market conditions.

The release of the IMF’s findings coincides with an aggressive, industry-wide race by major U.S. financial institutions and market infrastructure providers to stake a claim in the rapidly evolving tokenization space. Traditional Wall Street giants are increasingly seeking bridges to connect institutional and retail crypto investors with conventional financial products.

As part of this broader institutional push, the New York Stock Exchange has outlined plans to reach crypto-native investors by partnering with Blockchain.com to offer tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds. Simultaneously, ICE, the parent company of the NYSE, is collaborating with digital asset exchange OKX to develop around-the-clock tokenized stock trading frameworks operating under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s newly established innovation exemptions.

The technological infrastructure supporting these products is also expanding rapidly across diverse blockchain networks. Securitize recently expanded its suite of tokenized stocks—featuring prominent shares of Nvidia, Apple, and Amazon—to the Solana blockchain, with intentions to deploy across additional distributed ledger networks in the near future.

Derivatives exchanges are likewise adapting to the trend. Cboe has struck a licensing deal with S&P to develop tokenized options products. Meanwhile, retail-focused crypto platforms continue to roll out their own localized offerings, highlighted by Coinbase launching tokenized stocks for non-U.S. users on its Ethereum layer-2 network, Base.