Tokenised stocks are on-chain tokens representing shares, or exposure to them. The pitch is straightforward and genuinely attractive: fractional ownership, trading around the clock, access from anywhere, near-instant settlement, and equities that can plug into on-chain applications.

After several false starts, 2026 turned the category into a headline: the SEC published a tokenised-securities taxonomy in January sketching compliant paths, the DTC moved to pilot tokenisation in the second half of the year, and major platforms raced to list offerings.

Which makes the important question urgent rather than academic. All these products show you the same price chart. They are not the same instrument.

Three structures, three different things to own

1. Fully backed with a legal claim. A regulated entity buys the actual share, holds it with a custodian, and issues a token that legally represents it. You own the economic interest in a real share, held for you by an identifiable institution under an identifiable regulator. These are typically permissioned — you pass KYC and the token can only move between approved holders.

2. A claim on the issuer. The issuer promises to pay you what the share is worth. There may or may not be a share behind it; either way, your counterparty is the issuer’s balance sheet. If it fails you are an unsecured creditor in whatever jurisdiction it was incorporated in.

3. Synthetic exposure. A price feed, a collateral pool, and no share anywhere in the structure. You hold a derivative position that tracks a stock. Perfectly legitimate as a product, entirely different as a thing to own — and dependent on the oracle and the collateral, not on the company.

All three can be marketed with the same company logo and the same ticker.

The questions that separate them

  • What does the token legally entitle you to? If the documentation cannot answer this in one sentence, it is structure two or three.
  • Who holds the underlying share, and where? A named custodian in a named jurisdiction, or a description with no nouns in it.
  • Dividends. Paid, reinvested, reflected in the token price, or not at all? Each is common, and the tax treatment differs.
  • Voting. Almost never passed through. If shareholder rights matter to you, this category does not deliver them.
  • Corporate actions. Splits, mergers, delistings and takeovers all need explicit handling. Ask what happened during the last one.
  • Redemption. Can anyone exchange the token for the actual share, and if so, who and on what terms?
  • Who regulates it, and does that cover you? “Regulated” often means regulated somewhere that is not where you live, and many offerings explicitly exclude US persons. See our country guides.

The 24/7 catch

Round-the-clock trading is the headline feature and the one with the most hidden edges. The underlying market is not open around the clock, so at 3am on a Sunday nobody knows what the share is worth — the price is a market maker’s estimate, spreads widen accordingly, and liquidity is thin.

Worse, a token can move a long way overnight on news, then the real market opens and prices somewhere else entirely. Weekend and overnight trading in these instruments is a bet on the market maker’s pricing as much as on the company.

Where this sits

Tokenised stocks are one branch of the broader real-world asset wave — traditional financial instruments adopting crypto settlement rails where regulation permits. The equity branch is the hardest because equities carry rights that a bearer token cannot easily represent: votes, shareholder communications, class actions, and a body of law built around registered ownership.

Tax treatment is unsettled and varies by country — a tokenised share might be taxed as a security, as a crypto asset, or as a derivative, and the difference is significant. Our framework for crypto taxes covers the general shape, but this is a genuine “ask a professional in your jurisdiction” case.

Nothing here is financial advice and none of it is tax advice. See our risk disclaimer.