Finance11 October, 20262 min read
IMF Says Tokenized U.S. Equities See Off-Hours Demand, But Remain Volatile And Illiquid
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Investors are increasingly demanding tokenized stocks for smaller trades and after-hours trading. Market remains volatile and illiquid, with tokenized stocks about 1.5x more volatile.
5 outlets told this the same way.
IMF flags tokenized stocks
The International Monetary Fund said investors are using blockchain-based shares for smaller and after-hours trades, but it warned that tokenized equities remain a small, fragmented market that is still volatile and illiquid. The IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report, titled Scaling Tokenization: New efficiencies and new vulnerabilities, examined 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. The IMF found that more than half of trading took place outside regular U.S. market hours, and it said about 80% of trades were for less than one share.
The IMF also said overnight price moves carried useful information, with more than 85% of the overnight movement in tokenized shares reflected in their traditional counterparts within five minutes. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen said, "Moving assets onchain is only the first step," as the IMF argued that legal, liquidity and interoperability safeguards still need to catch up.
Liquidity, law, and settlement
The IMF said liquidity, legal rules and settlement systems have not caught up, and it warned that the market’s fragmentation across private platforms, public blockchains, custodians and settlement tools can leave systems that 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. The IMF warned that automated margin calls and liquidations, collateral moving between platforms and 24-hour trading could make a market shock harder to contain.
The IMF said the risks are still small because tokenized markets remain small, but it argued that legal rules on ownership, safeguards for liquidity, links between systems and settlement arrangements need to be developed before the market grows much larger. CoinDesk said the IMF found tokenized stocks are "markedly less liquid and more volatile" than the conventional equities they track.
Scale and who is moving
The IMF estimated the tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market at about $65 billion as of July 31, and it said tokenized equities accounted for roughly $2.3 billion of the total. The IMF compared that figure with a 2025 global equity market capitalization of just under $160 trillion, according to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA). The IMF said tokenized stocks were about 1.5 times as volatile as the equivalent shares on traditional venues and significantly less liquid.
Bullish (BLSH), a Gibraltar-based crypto company and CoinDesk’s parent company, introduced tokenized equity trading in August, while 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. The IMF’s report said the tokenized equities market is still nascent, and it framed the demand pattern as evidence that investors value 24/7 access and lower entry points, not just the technology behind a tokenized stock.