Wall Street Raced to Tokenize Treasury Funds. It Left Tokenized Stocks — the Part Retail Actually Wants — to a Single Crypto Startup.
Every major asset manager now has a tokenized Treasury fund, and they compete head-to-head onchain: Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, JPMorgan, State Street and BlackRock are all there, none of them dominant. Tokenized stocks are the opposite. The category everyone points to as tokenization's consumer breakthrough is, underneath, a near-monopoly — one crypto-native firm issues 83.5% of the tokenized stocks we track, and the big traditional names are absent. That split says something about where the serious money thinks the opportunity is — and it means the tokenized asset most people want to buy is the one where you carry the most single-issuer risk.
- Tokenized Treasury funds are the one investable tokenized category that is a real competitive market: 22 distinct firms issue the ones we track, and the largest holds just 13.3%. The roster is the establishment — Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, JPMorgan, State Street, WisdomTree, and BlackRock (through Securitize and Circle's Hashnote). This is where the largest asset managers chose to compete onchain (Aug 2026).
- Tokenized stocks are the opposite — a near-monopoly. One crypto-native firm, Backed Finance, issues 83.5% of the tokenized stocks we track; the rest split among a handful of fintech and crypto issuers, and no major traditional manager issues any. The most-hyped consumer category in tokenization is, structurally, one company's market.
- That split is a choice about where the opportunity is. Tokenizing a Treasury fund extends a product these firms already sell to institutions; tokenizing stocks means building consumer-facing rails under an unsettled US regulatory picture. The establishment took the first and passed on the second — leaving a fast-growing retail category dependent, for now, on a single issuer's operations, terms and standing.
Tokenization takes a real asset — a Treasury fund, a barrel of gold, a share of Apple — and issues a version of it that lives on a blockchain, where it can settle in seconds and trade around the clock. The market has grown into the tens of billions of dollars, and the loudest story in it this year is tokenized stocks: crypto tokens that track real shares, now held by more than a million people and pitched as tokenization's arrival for ordinary investors. But the more revealing question isn't how fast a category is growing. It's who is bothering to build it — and there, the tokenized-asset market splits in a way that should give a stock buyer pause.
Start with tokenized Treasury funds — essentially money-market funds that live onchain, holding US government debt and paying a yield. This is a crowded, competitive market. Across the ones we track, 22 different firms issue them, and no single issuer accounts for even a seventh of the total. More telling than the count is the roster: Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, JPMorgan, State Street, WisdomTree, VanEck, and BlackRock — whose flagship tokenized fund runs through Securitize. When the largest asset managers in the world decided to put a product onchain and compete for it, this is the product they chose.
Now tokenized stocks, and the picture inverts. A single firm — Backed Finance, a crypto-native issuer — accounts for 83.5% of the tokenized stocks we track, and remains the clear leader on any reasonable count. The rest are split among a short list of fintech and crypto players, and the names that dominate the Treasury market are absent: no BlackRock tokenized stock, no Fidelity, no Vanguard. The category that gets written up as tokenization's consumer breakthrough is, under the surface, the least contested corner of the investable market — closer to one company's catalog than to a market.
Fig. 1
Across the tokenized assets you can invest in, only Treasury funds are a competitive market.
Each bar is the largest single issuer's share of that category, among the instruments we track. Tokenized Treasury funds stand alone as a genuine market — the top issuer is only 13.3%, and 22 firms compete. Every other investable category is dominated by one issuer: tokenized stocks 83.5% (Backed), tokenized stock ETFs 84.9% (Ondo), private credit 60%, tokenized commodities 50%. Stablecoins are excluded here — they're a payment tool, not an investment. This counts issuers, not dollar value, and reflects the instruments we track; counting more would only add competitors, so the Treasury market's edge over the rest is if anything understated.
Why the establishment picked Treasuries
The split isn't random; it follows the incentives. A tokenized Treasury fund is a new wrapper on a product these firms already run — a money-market fund — sold to the institutions they already serve. The regulatory path is comparatively clear, the buyer is sophisticated, and the token is mostly a faster settlement rail for something familiar. For a Franklin Templeton or a BlackRock, tokenizing a Treasury fund is a low-risk extension of the core business, so all of them did it, and they compete.
Tokenizing stocks is a different proposition. It means holding the real shares of hundreds of companies, keeping each token synced to splits and dividends, and — the hard part — selling to consumers under a US regulatory framework for tokenized equities that is still unsettled. That is a consumer-fintech business with legal tail-risk, not an institutional extension, and the largest managers have stayed out of it. The gap was filled by a firm willing to build the whole catalog and wear the regulatory uncertainty — which is how one issuer ended up making the large majority of the market.
What it means for anyone buying one
A tokenized stock is only as good as the firm standing behind it. That firm holds the real shares, honors redemptions, and keeps the token tracking the stock; if it has an operational failure, a custody problem, or a regulatory halt, the token can break from the asset it represents. In a competitive market, that risk is spread — if one issuer stumbles, you hold others, or move. In tokenized stocks today, most of the market runs through a single issuer, so most of the market carries the same single point of failure. That is a real and specific risk, and it is the opposite of the impression the “stocks are going onchain” headlines leave.
None of this makes tokenized stocks a bad idea or Backed a bad issuer — building the category first is a genuine achievement, and the concentration is a sign of how early this is, not of anything wrong. But it sets up the question worth watching. The tokenized-stock market is a near-monopoly that a serious competitor could still contest, because the barrier is the work of building a rival catalog and clearing the regulation, not a lock-in that can't be undone. If tokenized equities are going to be a real market rather than one company's product, the tell will be the first major asset manager that decides the regulatory picture is clear enough to enter. Until one does, the most-hyped corner of tokenization rests on a single firm.
Among the tokenized Treasury funds we track (Aug 28, 2026): 22 distinct issuers, largest 13.3% (Franklin Templeton). Issuers include Fidelity (two entities), JPMorgan Asset Management, State Street, WisdomTree, China Asset Management, Spiko, OpenEden and VanEck, plus BlackRock via Securitize and Circle's Hashnote. Counts distinct issuers among the instruments we track, not dollar value.
Verified Aug 28, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/ratingsAmong the tokenized stocks we track, Backed Finance issues 83.5% (595 of 713), followed by bStocks (53), Dinari (31), Ondo (20), Robinhood (13) and Securitize (1). No major traditional asset manager issues a tokenized stock. This share depends on coverage: counting the full set of Robinhood tokens (many are inactive in our catalog) would take Backed from 83.5% down to about 68%, still the clear leader, with one crypto-native firm dominant and no traditional manager present either way. We can be confident the traditional managers are genuinely absent, not merely untracked, because we do catalog all of them — BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin, JPMorgan, State Street, WisdomTree — in tokenized Treasuries; they have not issued a tokenized stock.
Verified Aug 28, 2026 · onchainbenchmark.com/ratingsLargest issuer's share among the instruments we track: Treasury funds 13.3% (the outlier), tokenized commodities 50% (Matrixdock), private credit 60% (Figure), tokenized stocks 83.5% (Backed), tokenized stock ETFs 84.9% (Ondo). Treasuries are the only investable tokenized category that is a broad, competitive market. Stablecoins are excluded as a payment instrument, not an investment.
OnChain Benchmark- Who issues tokenized stocks?
- Mostly one firm. Of the tokenized stocks we track, Backed Finance — a crypto-native issuer — accounts for 83.5% (595 of 713), followed by bStocks, Dinari, Ondo, Robinhood and Securitize with far smaller numbers, as of August 2026. No major traditional asset manager (BlackRock, Fidelity, Vanguard) issues a tokenized stock. This counts how many firms issue them, not dollar value, and reflects the tokens we track.
- Why are tokenized Treasury funds more competitive than tokenized stocks?
- Tokenizing a Treasury fund extends a product the big asset managers already sell to institutions, under a comparatively clear regulatory path — so all of them did it, and 22 firms now compete, none above 13.3%. Tokenizing stocks is a consumer-facing business under an unsettled US regulatory framework for tokenized equities, which the largest managers have stayed out of, leaving one crypto-native firm to build most of the market.
- What's the risk in a tokenized stock being issued by one firm?
- A tokenized stock depends on its issuer to hold the real shares, honor redemptions and keep the token tracking the stock. If that issuer has an operational, custody or regulatory problem, the token can break from the underlying asset. When 83.5% of the market runs through one issuer, most of the market shares that single point of failure — a concentration risk that the growth headlines don't convey.
- Are stablecoins part of this comparison?
- No. Stablecoins are a payment and settlement instrument — a way to hold and move dollars — not an investment you buy for a return. This report compares the tokenized assets you would actually invest in (stocks, Treasury funds, private credit, commodities), where the question of who issues them and how concentrated each market is has direct bearing on the risk you take.