Wrapper tokens backed by custodied shares dominate the market, while issuer-sponsored and synthetic stocks remain niche
Most tokenized stocks are not issued by the companies whose names they carry. They are issued by middlemen.
Collateralized tokens now make up 86.5% of the tokenized stock market. Issuer-sponsored shares account for just 6.5%, and synthetic and other tokens fill out the remaining 7%.
Who builds the wrappers
Technically, these wrapper tokens are backed by actual shares held by a custodian. The token lives on a blockchain, while the underlying stock sits in a traditional brokerage account.
Issuer-sponsored tokens work differently. The company itself is involved in putting its equity on-chain. That model currently covers only a sliver of the market.
Synthetic tokens are a third route. They are designed to track a stock’s price rather than represent direct ownership of the share.
Wider research on the sector puts the issuer-sponsored segment at roughly 6% to 11%, depending on how products are classified.
Custody is unusually concentrated. Alpaca custodied the underlying shares for about 83.5% of the market.
A market getting bigger, fast
The tokenized stock market was valued at approximately $3.5 billion to $3.8 billion as of late October 2026.
The holder count is the more striking number. Between 3.77 million and 5.3 million people now hold tokenized stocks.
Those holders represent about 82% of all on-chain real-world asset holders.
Several platforms are driving that growth. The major names include Ondo, Binance bStocks, xStocks, and Robinhood.
Their pitch targets non-US users. Tokenized stocks offer fractional ownership and 24/7 trading, which traditional exchanges do not.
Why wrappers won
The dominance of collateralized tokens is not an accident. The research points to regulatory advantages in distributing these products globally.
Offshore issuance lets platforms reach large pools of demand without waiting for every company to sign on. A wrapper issuer can tokenize a stock the issuer never asked to be tokenized.
The tradeoff is the investor rights question. A wrapper holder may not have the same protections as someone holding the share directly, such as the protections that come with traditional stock ownership.
The DeFi gap
Utilization in lending and DeFi sits at an estimated 2% to 7% of total supply. Most tokenized stocks are being bought and held, not borrowed against or deployed in on-chain strategies.
The research cites limited liquidity and volatility as barriers. Lenders tend to be cautious about collateral that trades thinly or swings sharply.
What this means
For investors, the 86.5% figure is a reminder to read what they are buying. Most tokenized stocks are claims on a custodial arrangement, not shares registered in the holder’s name.
The custody concentration deserves attention. With Alpaca holding the underlying shares for about 83.5% of the market, operational resilience at a single firm carries outsized weight for millions of holders.
The DeFi utilization rate is the metric to watch. If it climbs from the 2% to 7% range, tokenized stocks will be doing more than mirroring brokerage accounts.
The research suggests that path depends on custody and regulatory frameworks adapting. Clearer rights for token holders and deeper liquidity could support stronger DeFi integration, though none of that is guaranteed.
