Tokenized U.S. stocks are attracting investors who want fractional positions and access outside normal exchange hours, but the market remains substantially less liquid and more volatile than the shares it mirrors, according to new research from the International Monetary Fund. The findings give policymakers an early empirical view of how blockchain-based equities are being used rather than relying only on industry projections.

Off-hours access is the clearest use case

The IMF's October 2026 Global Financial Stability Report examined five highly liquid tokenized U.S. equity products issued by Ondo and xStocks across 11 centralized and decentralized venues. The sample covered tokens linked to the S&P 500, Nasdaq, Tesla, Alphabet and Nvidia, representing about $345 million. More than half of trading volume occurred outside regular U.S. market hours, including premarket, after-hours, overnight and weekend sessions.

Related reporting: Backpack targets 10,000 tokenized stock symbols on Solana

Trade sizes also point to a retail-oriented market. About 80% of transactions involved less than one share, which the IMF interpreted as evidence that fractional ownership is a meaningful feature rather than a secondary marketing claim. The report said that investors in other regions and those reacting to news while U.S. exchanges are closed may particularly value continuous access.

Onchain prices can carry information

The study found that overnight moves in the tokenized products were largely reflected in their conventional counterparts soon after U.S. markets opened. Across the five-product sample, estimated pass-through ranged from 87% to 99% during the first five minutes of trading. That suggests the two markets often respond to similar information even though one trades continuously and the other follows exchange hours.

Price alignment did not eliminate market-quality gaps. The IMF measured realized volatility in tokenized equities at roughly 1.5 times the level of equivalent traditional shares. Centralized token venues were materially less liquid than conventional exchanges, while decentralized venues were less liquid by a wider margin. Higher-volume venues generally tracked the underlying shares more closely than smaller ones.

A growing market with structural limits

The wider public market for tokenized real-world assets, excluding repos, reached about $65.1 billion as of July 31, the IMF said. Tokenized equities accounted for an estimated $2.3 billion, and more than 70% of their value was concentrated at Ondo Finance and Backed Finance. Tokenized fixed income was much larger at about $48 billion, including $30.4 billion of credit and $17.5 billion of money-market funds.

CoinDesk, which reported the study on October 11, noted that the IMF's conclusions arrive as exchanges and financial companies expand tokenized-share offerings. That growth does not resolve uncertainty over what a token legally represents, who holds the underlying asset or how claims would be treated in insolvency. The report identified legal certainty, regulatory clarity, interoperability and safe settlement assets as four connected constraints.

Benefits and risks rise together

The IMF said tokenization could reduce reconciliation work, automate dividends and other corporate actions, and improve collateral movement. It also warned that round-the-clock trading, automated margin calls and liquidations, and links between platforms could transmit shocks faster as the market grows. Current systemic risks remain limited because the sector is small, but safeguards may be harder to add after infrastructure becomes widely used.

The policy message is therefore conditional rather than hostile. The fund recommended technology-neutral regulation, clearer ownership rules, interoperable networks, resilient settlement arrangements, circuit breakers and stronger monitoring of links with traditional markets. The evidence supports a real demand for fractional and off-hours trading; it does not yet show that tokenized equities can match the depth, legal certainty or resilience of established exchanges.

Sources

AI-generated editorial image; not a photograph of the reported event. Prepared with AI assistance and source verification.