Subject: What are “tokenized stocks”?
Every time I think I have heard everything about the markets something new pops up. What are “tokenized stocks”?

https://www.wsj.com/finance/st...


Tokenized Stocks Are Coming to a Market Near You: Five Things to Know
Big U.S. exchanges are working on plans to offer digital tokens that mimic shares and trade 24/7

By Vicky Ge Huang, The Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2026

Wall Street firms are in a race to transform stocks and other traditional assets into digital tokens using the technology that underpins bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. …

In their current form, tokenized stocks are digital tokens that represent shares of publicly traded companies on the blockchain. By design, each token is equivalent to a single share of stock.

Most of the tokens trading today are technically derivatives and not stocks, at least at the moment, and thus don’t confer the holder all of the rights of ownership that shares provide—even if they track those shares’ prices. In the future, though, tokens are expected to grant those rights, including dividend payouts and the ability to vote on shareholder proposals. For example, the exchange operator Nasdaq is working on a plan to make tokenized stocks the official digital version of the stocks themselves…

Tokenized stocks are gaining popularity because blockchain technology allows them to be traded 24/7, a feature already familiar to crypto investors but previously impossible in traditional markets. Tokenization also makes expensive blue-chip stocks accessible through fractional ownership, allowing anyone to buy a small digital slice of a company for just a few dollars. …

Some digital tokens tracking popular U.S. stocks have deviated wildly from underlying prices. This is primarily because many tokenized stocks are thinly traded, making them susceptible to sharp price moves when users buy or sell more than the markets can handle…

In January, the SEC issued guidance on tokenization that distinguished between tokenized securities issued by the companies themselves and those issued by third-party such as exchanges. More recently, federal banking agencies stated that for a bank to hold tokenized assets as real assets on their balance sheets, the tokenized assets must grant investors the same legal rights as the original security. [end quote]

Anyone who puts real money into buying tokenized stocks needs to read the fine print very carefully. A token which “represents” a share of stock is not the same as an actual share of stock. If it doesn’t yield the dividend of the actual stock it’s purely speculative (like bitcoin itself) and has no real value.

Shares of stock are shares of an actual company. The financial reports of the company reports earnings per share. Tokenized stocks issued by third parties would be excluded.

I can understand why an investor (e.g. a non-U.S. investor) might want to buy a share of a U.S. company over the blockchain – IF it was an actual share of stock issued by a company. I can’t understand why anyone would buy a share of “tokenized” stock or why it would be valued anywhere near the real share.

Wendy