More than half of all trading in tokenised US stocks happens outside regular Wall Street hours, according to the International Monetary Fund.
The finding comes from a chapter of the IMF’s latest Global Financial Stability Report. The IMF studied the five most liquid tokenised US equities, including tokens tracking Tesla, Nvidia and the S&P 500, across 11 trading venues over a full year.
Who is buying
The trades are small. About 80% are for less than one full share, which points to retail investors using tokens to buy fractions of stocks they could not otherwise afford in whole.
The timing matters too. With more than half of trading taking place when US exchanges are closed, tokenised stocks are being used for exactly what they offer that the real market does not: round-the-clock access.
Prices that mean something
The IMF found that on-chain prices carry real information. When Wall Street reopened, the traditional shares absorbed between 87% and 99% of the price moves their tokenised versions had made overnight. In other words, the overnight token market was largely anticipating where the real stock would open.
Volatile and thin
The weaknesses are just as clear. Tokenised equities were about 1.5 times as volatile as the underlying stocks and much less liquid. The gap was widest on decentralised exchanges, where prices strayed furthest from the traditional market.
The market is also small and concentrated, worth about $2.3 billion in total. Ondo Finance and Backed Finance’s xStocks account for more than 70% of it. Both issue synthetic tokens that track a stock’s price without giving holders direct ownership of the shares.
What the IMF recommends
The IMF said the systemic risk is limited for now, but urged regulators to consider circuit breakers for 24/7 trading and to watch the links to traditional markets more closely. It added that its findings “should be interpreted with caution,” given how early the market is.
The study lands as the sector moves onshore. The SEC’s innovation exemption now allows tokenised trading of real US listed stocks, and firms including OKX and ICE are preparing venues under it.
