Robinhood leads the pack as traders put brokerage-issued stock tokens to work in lending markets and DEX liquidity pools
Tokenized stocks are no longer just sitting in wallets. As of November 3, 2026, users had deposited $130.5 million into DeFi venues using stock tokens issued by Robinhood, Binance, and Coinbase.
Who’s leading the deposit race
Robinhood sits comfortably in first place. Its tokenized stocks account for $69.0 million in DeFi deposits, more than half of the three-issuer total.
Binance comes second with its bStocks product, which holds $36.5 million in deposits. Coinbase trails at $24.9 million.
The ranking roughly tracks how deep each issuer has gone on infrastructure. Robinhood built its own Layer-2 chain, a separate network that settles back to a larger blockchain, and launched its stock tokens alongside it in July 2026.
Robinhood’s stock tokens have shown particularly strong utilization rates on that native chain.
Binance actually moved first, debuting bStocks in June 2026. Coinbase was the latecomer of the trio, bringing tokenized equities live on Base, its own blockchain network, in August 2026.
Where the money is going
Deposits have flowed mainly into two places: lending markets and decentralized exchange liquidity pools.
Lending markets work a bit like a pawn shop with a smart contract behind the counter. You post your stock tokens as collateral and borrow against them, or you lend them out and earn interest from borrowers.
DEX liquidity pools are different. Users park pairs of assets in a shared pot so others can trade against it, and the depositors collect a cut of the trading fees.
The broader numbers show how fast this has moved. Total DeFi deposits of tokenized stocks across all issuers surpassed $300 million by October 25, 2026.
That figure reflects a 2,451.5% increase year-over-year.
Meanwhile, the total on-chain tokenized equity value stood at approximately $3.2 billion by late October 2026. Only a fraction of that supply has made its way into DeFi protocols, so most tokenized stock holders are still just holding.
What you actually own
A key caveat: tokenized stocks typically represent price exposure rather than direct share ownership.
Put differently, the token tracks the stock’s price. It doesn’t necessarily make you a shareholder with the same rights you’d get from buying through a traditional brokerage account.
These products also cater primarily to non-US users. That shapes who is driving the deposit numbers, and it shapes where regulatory questions are likely to come from.
For international traders, the appeal is obvious. They get exposure to US equities through a wallet, around the clock, with the option to plug those tokens into DeFi strategies that a standard brokerage would never offer.
Why brokerages are racing on-chain
The summer of 2026 turned into a launch season for tokenized equities. Three major platforms rolled out products within roughly three months of each other.
Each took a slightly different path. Binance launched a branded product, Coinbase went through Base, and Robinhood built a dedicated chain from scratch.
The early deposit data suggests vertical integration pays off. Robinhood controls the token, the chain, and a large share of the user funnel, and it currently holds the biggest slice of DeFi deposits among the three.
What this means for traders and the market
The risks travel with the opportunity. Using tokenized stocks in lending markets introduces liquidation risk if prices fall, and stock prices can gap sharply on earnings or macro news.
There is also the ownership question. Since many of these tokens offer price exposure rather than actual shares, holders depend on the issuer’s structure holding up, which is a different kind of risk than owning a share outright.
The metric worth watching is the gap between total tokenized equity value and the amount deployed in DeFi. If more of that approximately $3.2 billion migrates into lending markets and liquidity pools, it would show users treating stock tokens as active financial building blocks rather than digital replicas of a brokerage statement.
