IMF finds demand for tokenized stocks, says the market is still volatile, illiquid

Investors are using blockchain-based shares for smaller and after-hours trades. The IMF says liquidity, legal rules and settlement systems have not caught up.

Tokenized stocks are already delivering two of crypto’s long-promised benefits: round-the-clock trading and the ability to buy a fraction of a share. They are also markedly less liquid and more volatile than the conventional equities they track, according to a new International Monetary Fund (IMF) study.

The IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report, titled Scaling Tokenization: New efficiencies and new vulnerabilities, examines the five most actively traded tokenized U.S. equities, including Tesla (TSLA), Nvidia (NVDA) and Alphabet (GOOG) as well as measures such as the Nasdaq 100 Index, across centralized and decentralized venues.

More than half of trading took place outside regular U.S. market hours, the IMF found. About 80% of trades were for less than one share. For the report, those figures are evidence that investors value 24/7 access and lower entry points, not just the technology behind a tokenized stock.

The study also found that overnight moves in tokenized stocks carried useful information for the underlying shares. Once U.S. markets opened, more than 85% of the overnight movement in tokenized shares was reflected in their traditional counterparts within five minutes, the IMF said.

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

The IMF’s message is that while the use case is real, the market is still nascent. It said the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market has grown rapidly, estimating it at about $65 billion as of July 31. Tokenized equities accounted for roughly $2.3 billion of the total. That compares with a 2025 global equity market capitalization of just under $160 trillion, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), the trade group for the U.S. securities industry.

Still, the tokenization project is growing. Bullish (BLSH), a Gibraltar-based crypto company and CoinDesk’s parent company, introduced tokenized equity trading in August. Earlier this month, OKX and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), which owns and operates the New York Stock Exchange, filed plans for a venue offering round-the-clock trading in tokenized U.S. shares.

They are not alone. Crypto exchanges Coinbase Global (COIN), Kraken and Binance also offer tokenized stock trading, as does Robinhood Markets (HOOD).

According to the IMF, tokenized stocks were about 1.5 times as volatile as the equivalent shares on traditional venues and significantly less liquid.

The problem is not simply that blockchain markets are small. Tokenization needs enough issuers, investors, trading venues and settlement assets on compatible systems to deliver its promised savings in cost and time. Today’s market is split across private platforms, public blockchains, custodians and settlement tools that often do not work together.

The IMF said tokenization could replace some of the manual work firms do to reconcile records, automate tasks such as dividend payments and speed up collateral transfers. It warned that automated margin calls and liquidations, collateral moving between platforms and 24-hour trading could make a market shock harder to contain.

The risks are still small because tokenized markets remain small, the IMF said. But its report argues that legal rules on ownership, safeguards for liquidity, links between systems and settlement arrangements need to be developed before the market grows much larger.

Diversified RWA stablecoins sustain 5-7% yield from real credit as crypto funding compresses to ~4%. GENIUS pushes yield off-chain; TAM grows to $4B in 3 years.