Are Tokenized Stocks Crypto’s Next $5T Opportunity? Nasdaq, SEC, and Congress All Move at Once

Tokenized stocks just crossed $1 billion in total value locked, and crypto strategist Tanaka thinks most people in the market are still underestimating what that number actually signals.

“If you ask me what the next market trend is, I would say tokenized stocks,” Tanaka wrote in an X post, framing the thesis around a problem that doesn’t get enough attention: access.

In the last three weeks alone, the SEC formally approved tokenized securities trading on Nasdaq, and Congress held one of its most significant tokenization hearings to date.

The Access Problem Driving Real Demand

For investors outside the United States, gaining exposure to American equities has always come with friction – broker dependency, intermediaries, and in many markets, outright restrictions. Tokenized stocks solve that by allowing direct onchain exposure to US equities, removing the layers that have historically kept global retail investors on the sidelines.

Tanaka’s argument is that this is a market responding to genuine, unmet demand.

What the Data Actually Shows

The numbers support that reading. Tokenized stocks now sit at roughly $907M-$1B in TVL, with monthly transfer volume running between $2.5B and $2.7B. The broader RWA market has reached $26.58B according to rwa.xyz, representing roughly 3-4x year-on-year growth.

The holder base has grown to approximately 180,000-200,000 wallets, with 85,000-90,000 actively transacting.

“The data is already pointing in one direction,” Tanaka noted. “This sector is still early and continuing to expand.”

Who Controls the Infrastructure

Ondo Finance currently dominates the tokenized securities space with 55-65% market share. Franklin Templeton, with over $1.5 trillion in assets under management, has already launched tokenized funds and is moving into tokenized ETFs. Major exchanges and infrastructure providers are actively building 24/7 trading rails for tokenized equities.

On March 9, Nasdaq announced a partnership with Kraken to build 24/7 tokenized stock trading infrastructure, powered by Kraken’s xStocks framework which has already processed over $25 billion in transactions.

Nine days later, on March 18, the SEC formally approved Nasdaq’s proposal to allow tokenized and traditional shares to trade side by side with identical tickers, prices, and shareholder rights.

NYSE went a step further, partnering with Securitize to build a full tokenized securities platform and naming it as the exchange’s first-ever digital transfer agent, giving it authority to issue stocks and ETFs directly as onchain tokens.

On March 25, the House Financial Services Committee held its most significant tokenization hearing to date, with a bipartisan conclusion entered on record: tokenized securities are no longer a question of whether but when. The CLARITY Act, which would provide the statutory framework governing this market, is approaching Senate markup in late April.

Zoom out to the addressable market and the scale becomes harder to dismiss. The global equities market is approximately $110-115 trillion. Even a 1-5% migration onchain translates to a $1T-$5T opportunity, according to Tanaka’s analysis.

For retail, the play isn’t the tokenized stocks themselves but the infrastructure being built around them. Tanaka is watching ONDO, MPL, CFG, and POLYX as the key infrastructure tokens in this buildout.