Tokenized assets hit $34B as investors favor single stocks

Tokenized assets have climbed past $34 billion as new data shows investors are trading and using stocks, credit and cash products differently once they move onchain.

Dune reported in its Q3 study, After Issuance: Reading the Onchain RWA Market, that the four main asset classes it tracked grew more than 140% over the year to $33.9 billion by Aug. 31, while an accompanying release put total tokenized RWA value at $34.5 billion. Cash-equivalent products accounted for close to half of the market, yet equities generated most secondary trading.

The report examined tokenized and synthetic exposure across equities, cash equivalents, credit and commodities. Dune tracked more than 2,600 products from over 250 issuers and platforms across 21 blockchains, using supply, holder, trading, lending and pricing data.

Tokenized stocks favor single companies over ETFs

Dune found one of the clearest differences in equities. Individual stocks represented 81% of tokenized equity holdings in spot markets, leaving 19% in funds and ETFs. The value of the single-stock holdings increased ninefold over the previous year.

Traditional equity markets have increasingly concentrated investor money in index funds and other packaged products. Dune CEO Frederik Haga told Fortune that onchain investors appear to behave differently, saying, “The way the market is wired is completely different.”

Trading activity makes the contrast clearer. Dune’s data showed equities accounted for just a small portion of tokenized asset supply but produced 93% of spot trading during August. Tokenized equity spot volume reached $12.6 billion, while equity perpetuals generated another $72.4 billion.

The report found that Asian equities accounted for 24% of equity perpetual open interest. Memory-chip companies were particularly active, with those names producing 47% of August equity perpetual volume. One SK Hynix contract reached annualized funding of 308% during July as traders paid heavily to maintain long exposure.

Recent RWA perpetual market data showing stocks leading trading activity found a similar pattern. Public equities generated approximately $175 billion in Q3 perpetual volume, close to 48% of RWA perpetual activity tracked in that report.

Tokenized cash barely moves while credit becomes collateral

Cash equivalents remain much larger than tokenized equities by value. Dune measured $17.8 billion in tokenized cash-equivalent products, with more than 95% of Treasury exposure concentrated in money-market funds and Treasury bills.

Secondary trading in those products remained extremely limited. Dune found that only 0.006% of tokenized cash-equivalent supply traded during August, even though the category represented roughly half of the assets covered by the study.

Credit showed another pattern. Around 19% to 21% of tokenized credit was deposited into lending protocols as collateral, according to Dune, compared with 0.4% for cash equivalents. The report contrasted that usage with traditional collateral markets, where government debt plays a much larger role.

Dune’s earlier research found a similar separation between assets that primarily sit on balance sheets and assets that circulate through DeFi. In May, the analytics firm measured $27.5 billion of tokenized RWAs but only $1.7 billion being used through collateral, lending or other DeFi activity.

A recent analysis of tokenized RWA usage across different asset classes made a related distinction. Falcon Finance executive Artem Tolkachev argued that low DeFi activity should not automatically be treated as weak demand because Treasury products bought for yield serve a different purpose from assets intended for active lending.

Tokenized equities are growing fast but remain tiny

Binance Research reported a slightly later market snapshot on Sept. 15, placing tracked RWA assets at $34.18 billion after an 85.2% increase during 2026. Bonds and money-market funds accounted for $18.29 billion, while tokenized equities reached $4.43 billion.

Equities had increased 390.4% during the year and represented 13% of the RWA assets tracked by Binance Research. Yet the $4.43 billion figure equaled only 0.0029% of its $151.9 trillion reference market for listed equities.

The $34.18 billion RWA market tracked in September showed that asset issuance and actual financial use were growing at different rates. Binance Research estimated that roughly 12% of tracked tokenized capital was deployed in lending, liquidity pools, collateral markets or other onchain applications.

Equity usage rose faster. Binance Research measured its Capital Activation Rate, which tracks deployed tokenized value, at 7.54% on Sept. 15, up from 1.95% at the beginning of 2026. Liquidity pools held 65.4% of deployed equity value, while lending accounted for another 28.1%.

The firm’s longer-term estimates remain projections. Its conservative, base and bull scenarios put tokenized equities at roughly $61 billion, $349 billion and $987 billion by 2030. Even the “$349 billion” base case would represent only around 0.23% of the reference equity market used in the study.

U.S. regulators open a limited path for tokenized stocks

Regulation in the U.S. is beginning to accommodate some of the activity identified by Dune. The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a five-year conditional exemption on Sept. 17 that allows qualifying Tokenized Securities Venues to trade tokenized National Market System stocks through permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools.

The exemption is limited. Eligible tokens must give holders the same interest and dividend, voting and liquidation rights as the traditional shares they represent. Synthetic products that provide only price exposure are outside the framework, while third-party tokenizers must notify an underlying issuer before listing its stock under specified circumstances.

The SEC’s five-year pathway for tokenized U.S. stocks creates a regulated testing route but does not approve every existing tokenized-stock product or platform. The order remains temporary and conditional, and the SEC is taking public comments while considering longer-lasting rules.

Traditional exchange operators are preparing their own products. Blockchain.com announced on Sept. 23 that it had signed an agreement with NYSE Group to explore 24/7 access to tokenized U.S.-listed stocks and ETFs through NYSE’s planned digital trading infrastructure.

The NYSE and Blockchain.com tokenized-stock plan remains subject to regulatory approval and has no confirmed public launch date. Their agreement covers potential distribution of tokenized securities and the exchange of crypto and traditional-market data between their platforms.

NYSE’s proposed venue is designed for continuous trading, fractional shares and blockchain settlement. The companies have not confirmed which stocks or ETFs would launch first or which jurisdictions would initially receive access.