Putting Wednesday’s pump aside, it’s been a miserable year for crypto prices. But the doldrums can mask bigger things happening beneath the surface, like the long-anticipated boom in tokenized equities. 

The market capitalization of tokenized equities has grown ninefold over the past year, to more than $3.7 billion. Perpetual futures contracts that reference stocks, ETFs, or equity indices have grown even faster. 

But that breakneck growth doesn’t necessarily mean we’re seeing long-term, anti-fragile adoption of blockchain-based equity issuance and trading. While the overall history of crypto is up-and-to-the-right, industry veterans will recall that some sub-sectors set the world on fire before flaming out, seemingly for good. Anyone remember NFTs? 

In our latest report, we tried to determine whether the recent growth in real-world asset tokenization is big enough to suggest staying power — is it durable, or a mirage?  

The report looks at two flavors of tokenization. The first is the issuance of equities on a blockchain. In this model, the tokens are backed by shares of a particular company. The tokens can often be redeemed for the shares, and the shares are held with a qualified custodian.

The second kind of tokenization considered is the perpetual futures contract that references an equity, equity fund, or equity index. These “perps” don’t come with a claim on the underlying asset, but they do offer leverage for traders seeking high-risk, high-reward opportunities. 

For simplicity’s sake, we’ll refer to them as “tokenized stocks” and “perps.” 

A triumvirate leads the market for tokenized stocks. Ondo Global Markets is the largest single issuer, with a market capitalization of $917 million across some 400 assets. 

Backed Finance (recently acquired by US-based crypto exchange Kraken) narrowly trails Ondo. Its xStocks product has a market capitalization of nearly $866 million across nearly 200 assets. Binance affiliate bTech Holdings is in a distant third place — its tokenized equities have a combined market capitalization of $564 million. 

Altogether, those three companies account for more than three-quarters of the market. But it’s even more concentrated in terms of volume. Ondo and bTech account for 98% of tokenized stock volume over the past month. 

If the market for tokenized stocks resembles a two- or three-member oligarchy, the market for equity-based perps is an absolute monarchy. There is one venue to rule them all: Hyperliquid’s trade.xyz, which saw $93 billion in volume over the past 30 days. That’s 88% of the market. 

And the growth here has been breathtaking. 

Open interest grew from $162 million in December to $3.2 billion by August, a 20x increase in under eight months. The seven-day average volume rose from roughly $1 billion in March to just under $5 billion in July. That steady growth masks a highly volatile ecosystem — zooming in, it’s easy to see that valleys and peaks define the market for equity-based perps. Half of all perp volume over the past five months happened in just 31 days. 

For the rest of our analysis, including how people appear to be using these assets — are they trading, or HODLing? — you can read the entire report here.

Forgd's Market Maker Leaderboard is now live on DefiLlama, ranking 48 market-making firms across more than 500 token projects on pricing, market depth, reliability, and execution quality. The same firm can perform very differently depending on the venue and market conditions, a distinction that volume and TVL numbers alone don't surface.

Find out how to evaluate the firms behind a token's liquidity in this spotlight.

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