Tokenized U.S. equities trade around the clock and in fractions of shares, but the market remains roughly $2.3 billion in size, markedly less liquid and about 1.5 times more volatile than the conventional shares it tracks, according to the International Monetary Fund's latest Global Financial Stability Report.

The report, titled "Scaling Tokenization: New efficiencies and new vulnerabilities," examined the five most actively traded tokenized U.S. equities — including Tesla (TSLA), Nvidia (NVDA) and Alphabet (GOOG) — plus measures such as the Nasdaq 100 Index, across both centralized and decentralized venues.

What did the IMF actually measure?

The findings point to genuine user demand rather than speculative novelty:

• More than half of tokenized stock trades occurred outside regular U.S. market hours.
• About 80% of trades involved less than one share.
• Overnight price moves carried real information: more than 85% of overnight movement in tokenized shares was reflected in their traditional counterparts within five minutes of the market open.

For the IMF, those figures show investors value 24/7 access and lower entry points — not the blockchain technology underneath the token itself.

How big is the market?

The IMF estimates the broader tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market at about $65 billion as of July 31, with tokenized equities accounting for roughly $2.3 billion of that. For scale, global equity market capitalization stood at just under $160 trillion in 2025, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA).

That gap defines the operational stakes. The IMF said tokenized stocks remain a small, fragmented market. Trading is split across private platforms, public blockchains, custodians and settlement tools that often do not interoperate — a structural constraint that prevents tokenization from delivering its promised cost and time savings.

Which firms are building here?

Institutional activity is accelerating despite the market's size. Bullish (BLSH), the Gibraltar-based crypto company, introduced tokenized equity trading in August. Earlier this month, OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), operator of the New York Stock Exchange, filed plans for a venue offering round-the-clock trading in tokenized U.S. shares.

They join a growing roster. Coinbase Global (COIN), Kraken and Binance already offer tokenized stock trading, as does Robinhood Markets (HOOD).

What are the vulnerabilities?

The IMF's core argument is that tokenization could deliver real efficiencies — replacing manual reconciliation work, automating dividend payments and speeding up collateral transfers — but at the cost of new transmission channels for stress. Automated margin calls and liquidations, collateral moving between platforms and 24-hour trading could make a market shock harder to contain, the report warned.

The risks remain contained only because tokenized markets are still small, the IMF said.

"Moving assets onchain is only the first step," Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said. "The bigger question is how efficiently that capital can work once it is there."

The IMF's conclusion is a sequencing argument: legal rules on ownership, liquidity safeguards, interoperability links between systems and settlement arrangements need to be built before the market grows much larger — not after the next stress event forces it.