More than 50% of tokenized stock trading occurs outside regular U.S. market hours, according to the International Monetary Fund's latest Global Financial Stability Report. About 80% of those trades are for less than one share, a signal of retail demand for fractional exposure to public equities.

The findings give the first serious institutional read on a market that has expanded rapidly with almost no official measurement. The IMF studied the five most liquid tokenized U.S. equities — including tokens tracking Tesla, Nvidia and the S&P 500 — across 11 trading venues over 365 days.

What did the IMF actually find?

The core result cuts in tokenization's favor: on-chain prices carry real information. When traditional markets reopened, regular shares absorbed between 87% and 99% of the overnight price moves their tokenized counterparts had made. In other words, the 24/7 token market is discovering prices that conventional equities largely confirm at the next open, not generating noise.

The structural weaknesses are equally clear. Tokenized equities were roughly 1.5 times more volatile than the underlying stocks and materially less liquid, with the widest dislocations on decentralized exchanges, where prices strayed furthest from traditional markets.

The market itself remains small and highly concentrated. It is worth about $2.3 billion, and Ondo Finance and Backed Finance's xStocks account for more than 70% of it. Both issue synthetic tokens that provide price exposure without direct share ownership — a legal and operational distinction the IMF notes, since holders have no claim on the underlying shares.

Given the market's early stage, the IMF said its findings "should be interpreted with caution." The report concluded that systemic risks remain limited for now.

What does the IMF want regulators to do?

The Fund urged regulators to consider circuit breakers for 24/7 trading and to monitor links between tokenized markets and traditional market infrastructure more closely. The recommendation addresses a structural gap: tokenized equities trade continuously while the underlying stocks do not, meaning volatility has nowhere to arbitrage away overnight except on thin crypto venues.

The warning continues a line the IMF opened earlier this year, when it cautioned that tokenized finance and stablecoins could amplify financial crises rather than merely reflect them.

Who is building the market the IMF measured?

The report lands as major U.S. institutions push into the same space. The New York Stock Exchange plans to reach crypto investors through Blockchain.com, and NYSE owner Intercontinental Exchange is working with OKX on 24/7 tokenized stock trading under the SEC's new innovation exemption.

Securitize recently brought tokenized stocks — including Nvidia, Apple and Amazon shares — to Solana, with additional blockchain networks planned. Cboe has struck an S&P deal for tokenized options, and Coinbase launched tokenized stocks for non-U.S. users on Base in August.

The operational consequences cut both ways for these entrants. The IMF's price-discovery data supports the case for around-the-clock tokenized equities as a legitimate trading format. But the concentration figures — two issuers controlling more than 70% of a $2.3 billion market — show how early the infrastructure still is, and the volatility and liquidity gaps identify exactly what incumbent venues with deeper balance sheets would need to fix to scale the product.

For regulators, the immediate question is timing. The IMF's circuit-breaker recommendation implies a policy window that closes as the market grows: interventions are cheap to design now, when systemic risk is limited, and costly to retrofit after tokenized equities link into mainstream settlement and custody chains.