What are tokenized equities on crypto exchanges?

They are digital tokens that track the price of a stock or commodity, issued by a third party and listed on a crypto exchange. Traders can buy them spot or, more commonly per the CoinGecko data, trade perpetual futures on them using stablecoin collateral.

Is this legal in the United States?

It is a gray area. The SEC has argued that tokenized securities remain securities under US law, meaning they require registration or an exemption. Most of the $6.6B in activity sits on offshore or non-US venues for that reason.

Which exchanges are driving the $6.6B figure?

CoinGecko's study, as reported by CoinTelegraph, points to Bybit, Kraken, and Gemini as the main venues expanding tokenized stock and commodity products. Perpetual futures on those tokens account for most of the volume.

Crypto Exchange Tokenized Assets Hit $6.6B, Up Fivefold as Perps Dominate: CoinGecko

Centralized crypto exchanges now host $6.6 billion in tokenized equities and commodities, a fivefold increase from earlier in the cycle, according to a CoinGecko study published Wednesday. The research, first reported by CoinTelegraph, points to perpetual futures on tokenized real-world assets as the segment doing most of the heavy lifting. The push comes as venues including Bybit, Kraken, and Gemini keep widening their non-crypto product menus to court traders who want stocks, gold, and oil exposure without leaving a crypto account.

By Clara Hoffmann· AI-assisted· L2 & scaling

What happened

CoinGecko put a number on something traders have been feeling for months. The research firm's latest study, cited by CoinTelegraph on Wednesday, puts the market for tokenized stocks and commodities on centralized crypto exchanges at $6. 6 billion, roughly five times the level from the start of this cycle.

Perpetual futures on tokenized equities and hard assets, not spot tokens, are doing most of the volume. The venues named as the biggest movers in this build-out are the usual suspects on the tier-one perp side: Bybit, Kraken, and Gemini, each of which has spent the past year adding tokenized S&P names, gold, and oil products alongside their core BTC and ETH order books. It is not a niche experiment anymore.

$6. 6B is roughly the same order of magnitude as the entire tokenized US Treasury market that BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Ondo have been fighting over.

Why it matters

The fivefold jump matters for three reasons, and they don't all pull in the same direction. First, it validates the thesis that a crypto-native trader will happily use a crypto venue to short Tesla or long gold if the UX is faster and the collateral is USDC. That is a direct competitive threat to retail brokers and to the CFD shops that owned this flow before.

Second, it shifts the risk profile of the exchanges themselves. A perp on tokenized MSFT is not a perp on ETH. It carries equity market hours, corporate action risk, and a wrapper issuer whose solvency the exchange is now indirectly underwriting.

Third, and this is the one to watch, it hands US and European regulators a live target. The SEC has spent two years arguing that tokenized securities are still securities. A $6.

Crypto Exchange Tokenized Assets Hit $6.6B, Up Fivefold as Perps Dominate: CoinGecko

What happened

Why it matters

Market impact

What to watch

Disclaimer

Key takeaways

Frequently asked

Sources