The market for tokenized equities, which are blockchain-based instruments backed 1:1 by underlying equities held in regulated custody, reached approximately $2.5 to $2.8 billion in total value by mid-August 2026, up from around $329 million a year earlier.

Ondo Finance, Binance, and Kraken-backed xStocks together account for more than 80% of that market, according to CryptoBriefing, with on-chain data drawn from DefiLlama and reporting from The Block.

Holders of tokenized stocks now number roughly 1.18 million, representing 63% of all holders of any form of tokenized real-world asset (RWA).

The growth in holder count tells a clearer story than market cap alone. At the start of 2026, tokenized equities held about 5% of the broader RWA space by market narrative and holder count rather than assets under management. That figure has since risen to approximately 15% on the same measure. By assets under management, tokenized equities represent only approximately 6 to 7% of the total RWA universe.

By dollar value, tokenized equities remain smaller than tokenized US Treasuries, which still dominate the $38.3 billion RWA sector at roughly 45% of total assets under management. But in terms of user adoption and monthly trading activity, equities are now the fastest-growing sub-category. Monthly spot trading volume for the sector hit $3.8 billion in June 2026.

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Platform Breakdown

Ondo Finance leads the sector through its platform, Ondo Stocks, which was rebranded from Ondo Global Markets in July 2026 after the company reported crossing $1 billion in total value locked. On-chain data from DefiLlama places the current aggregate at just under $986 million, reflecting a gap between Ondo's self-reported milestone and live on-chain figures. Ondo also claims more than 70% market share by issuer, citing RWA.xyz data, and its broader protocol TVL across all products including OUSG and USDY sits at approximately $3.78 billion.

The Ondo Stocks platform lists more than 438 tokenized US equities and ETFs. DefiLlama's chain breakdown shows $484 million on Ethereum, $473 million on BNB Chain, and $28 million on Solana.

In July, Ondo also launched Ondo Perps, a perpetual futures product on tokenized stocks offering up to 20x leverage, adding a dedicated derivatives layer to the platform. Separately, tokenized equities broadly are gaining traction as composable collateral in DeFi lending protocols, where reliable on-chain price feeds make them usable as a borrowing primitive.

Binance entered the sector in June 2026 with bStocks, a suite of BEP-20 tokens on BNB Chain representing US equities at a 1:1 ratio, backed by regulated custody under BTech Holdings Limited (a Binance Group entity). The platform reached $100 million in assets within two weeks of launch. By early August, it had climbed to $610.6 million, overtaking xStocks to claim second place.

Because bStocks are standard BNB Chain tokens, holders can use them directly in DeFi lending and yield protocols while retaining price exposure to the underlying stock.

Kraken's xStocks platform, operated through Kraken's parent company Payward, launched on Solana and has since expanded to Hyperliquid's HyperCore, an on-chain order book exchange. That move brings tokenized versions of NVIDIA, the S&P 500 ETF SPY, QQQ, SK Hynix, Micron, and others to a decentralized venue where settlement happens on-chain without a centralized intermediary at the trading layer. The platform gained additional regulatory credibility in early March 2026, when Nasdaq announced an institutional partnership with Kraken and xStocks alongside approvals for a tokenized securities trading framework. Cumulative trading volume on xStocks has approached $30 billion.

Despite the growth, concentration remains a structural issue. As CryptoBriefing noted in its August 2026 analysis, "secondary liquidity is thin and concentrated. Most trading volume clusters around a handful of well-known names." Order books for less prominent tokenized equities remain sparse, which limits their usefulness as collateral in DeFi protocols that rely on reliable price feeds.

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Why This Matters Outside the United States

Tokenized equities are almost entirely designed for non-US users. Offerings are structured under Regulation S, a US securities exemption that allows global distribution without full SEC registration.

Regional data from Asia Business Outlook shows that Southeast Asia accounts for 26.2% of active tokenized stock traders, South Asia 20.5%, and the Middle East and Africa 18.4%.

The Africa angle has become concrete. Nigeria-based fintech Daya launched a tokenized US stocks product in July 2026, built on Ondo's infrastructure, offering more than 400 US stocks and ETFs at a minimum investment of one dollar and a 0.25% fee.

Paul Joe, Daya's co-founder, described the trajectory in direct terms: "Tokenised stocks are going to do to US stocks what stablecoins did to US dollars: make them more accessible."

Nigeria already ranks sixth globally in crypto adoption, driven in part by a naira that has lost more than 70% of its value since 2023. Sub-Saharan Africa received $205 billion in on-chain value between July 2024 and June 2025, a 52% year-on-year increase, with stablecoins accounting for 43% of that transaction volume.

In South Asia, demand is present but regulatory clarity is not. India's SEBI is exploring a security token framework, but no clear pathway for retail access exists yet. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance flagged this gap in a June 2026 report specifically focused on tokenized assets in emerging economies, citing supervisory shortfalls, currency risk from USD-pegged settlement, and sparse secondary liquidity in local markets as the primary risks alongside the opportunity.

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What Comes Next

The infrastructure around the sector is maturing quickly. The DTCC received authorization in 2026 to create blockchain-based "digital twin" records of securities it already holds, which would embed tokenization into the core of US capital markets clearing. Nasdaq secured rule approvals for tokenized securities trading frameworks in March 2026, reinforcing a regulatory environment in which institutional participation is increasingly assumed rather than exceptional.

Jesse Knutson, Head of Operations at Bitfinex, has argued that emerging markets are well-positioned to benefit, noting that regions without entrenched legacy financial infrastructure tend to adopt digital settlement rails faster than developed markets. Knutson has also forecast the tokenized RWA total market cap growing to several trillion dollars over the next decade.

Whether that adoption curve continues will depend significantly on whether regulators in South Asia and Africa move from observation to workable frameworks before the market's current leaders consolidate their positions further.