95% of Tokenized Stock Traders Are Retail. Here's What They're Buying.

By Lidia Yadlos

The tokenized stock market is growing quickly, but until now there has been little data showing who is actually driving that growth.

New research from DeFiLlama, based on order-book data from Bitget, offers one of the clearest snapshots yet of who's actually buying tokenized stocks. According to the report, 95% of traders are retail investors, with the average trade worth just $422.

Most are using stablecoins to build fractional positions in Nvidia and Alphabet, while semiconductor companies accounted for nearly half of all trading activity despite the sector recording its weakest month since 2002.

The research arrives as tokenized equities continue expanding rapidly. Active market capitalization has grown more than 140% this year, increasing from $814 million to nearly $2 billion. That remains tiny compared with global equity markets.

Retail Is Building the Market

The report suggests tokenized equities have become a retail-first market. Rather than making institutional-sized allocations, most participants are gradually building positions in some of the world's largest technology companies through fractional purchases funded with stablecoins.

Semiconductor companies attracted nearly half of all trading activity, even though the sector recorded its weakest month since 2002.

Instead of rotating away from AI-linked companies during the correction, traders appeared to treat lower prices as an opportunity to add exposure.

The findings paint a picture that differs from traditional equity markets, where institutional investors still dominate trading volumes. In tokenized equities, retail investors are currently setting the pace.

One Stock Didn't Follow the Pattern

One company stood apart from almost everything else. According to the report, tokenized Cisco generated approximately $125 million in trading volume from only 651 traders, representing an average of almost $192,000 per participant.

That is dramatically different from the broader market, where average trade sizes remain just a few hundred dollars. The report doesn't identify those traders, but the figures suggest significantly larger participants than the retail investors responsible for most tokenized equity activity.

Whether those flows came from institutions, professional traders or a small number of high-net-worth investors isn't disclosed. What they do show is that the market is beginning to attract different types of investors depending on the underlying asset.

Liquidity Is Becoming the Product

As more exchanges launch tokenized stocks, simply listing additional companies is becoming less of a competitive advantage. Execution quality is starting to matter more.

DeFiLlama found that Bitget recorded the lowest median bid-ask spread among the tokenized equity platforms evaluated, alongside the deepest top-of-book liquidity across the five markets included in the study.

Its broader benchmark covering 36 stock perpetual contracts and eight commodity perpetual contracts also found Bitget led most measured order-book depth categories. Those metrics may prove increasingly important as the market matures.

Unlike traditional equities, where investors can choose from numerous highly liquid exchanges, tokenized stocks still trade across a relatively small number of venues. That places greater importance on execution quality, pricing and market depth.

A Market Still in Its Infancy

Despite growing more than 140% this year, tokenized equities remain tiny by traditional market standards. The entire sector is approaching $2 billion, while Nvidia alone is worth several trillion dollars and global equity markets are measured in the hundreds of trillions.

The numbers suggest tokenized equities are still in their earliest stages. For now, the market is being built largely by retail investors making small, fractional purchases. Whether institutions eventually reshape that picture remains one of the sector's biggest unanswered questions.

Published on DefiLlama

95% of Tokenized Stock Traders Are Retail. Here's What They're Buying.