Binance Co-CEO Teng: The Tokenization Process Will Not Happen Overnight

Richard Teng, Co-CEO of Binance, stated that tokenization could change the way global investors access the stock market, but this process will not happen overnight. He cited data from Binance Research as of September 15: tokenized stocks have grown by 390.4% this year, with an on-chain balance of approximately $4.43 billion, which is only 0.0029% of the global listed stock reference size of $151.9 trillion.

The same report, "The RWA Activation Era," shows that the on-chain management scale of tracked RWAs is approximately $34.18 billion, up 85.2% year-to-date; bonds and money market funds remain the largest category at about $18.29 billion, while stocks contributed approximately 22.4% of this year's increase, with their share in tracked RWAs rising from 4.9% to 13.0%. The overall ratio of programmable assets is about 0.01%, corresponding to over $300 trillion in major asset classes that can be tokenized.

The utilization metrics are decoupled from issuance. The capital activation rate for stocks rose from 1.95% at the beginning of the year to 7.54%; among the issued tokenized stocks, liquidity pools account for 65.4%, and lending accounts for 28.1%, totaling 93.5%. Another research material noted that the market value of active tokenized stocks increased by 314% this year to approximately $4 billion, with monthly transactions from issuers rising from $237 million in January to $7.9 billion in August, and turnover rates increasing from 0.23 times to 2.14 times.

The 2030 scenario follows "Tokenization’s Trillion-Dollar Runway": conservative at about $61 billion, baseline at about $349 billion, optimistic at about $987 billion, corresponding to PARs of about 0.04%, 0.23%, and 0.65%. Under the baseline assumption, if the activation rate increases from 10% to 20%, the deployed capital could rise from about $34.94 billion to $69.87 billion without needing new tokenized supply. Teng used these figures to downplay the narrative that "has already replaced the stock market."

Competition at the product level has rewritten market shares. After launching on June 11, bStocks surpassed a market value of $500 million in about seven weeks, capturing about 27% of the global tokenized stock market value in July; Ondo's share fell from about 75% to about 45% during the same period, with xStocks at about 27% and Robinhood's tokenized products at about 1%. Following the issuance of Ondo on the BNB Chain, it is close to carrying 30% of the total market value of all tokenized stocks and ETFs. On the U.S. side, the SEC's limited exemption for qualified licensed on-chain venues to trade tokenized NMS stocks is seen as a variable for the next stage by the market.

In terms of market mechanisms, buyers are retail and cross-border funds seeking 24-hour trading, stablecoin settlement, and fragmented exposure to U.S. stocks, while sellers are issuers and market-making pools that package stocks into on-chain certificates. Growth is driven by product launches and trading volume, not a one-time regulatory conclusion. Beneficiaries are exchanges and public chains that can simultaneously provide issuance, matching, and DeFi collateral entry; pressured parties are traditional brokers that segment clients by trading hours and custodial accounts, as well as issuers that still treat tokenized stocks as static certificates without entering lending and market-making. The $349 billion baseline scenario still only covers 0.23% of the reference stock market, and pricing power has yet to shift from exchange order books to on-chain automated market-making.

On a supplementary level: the active TVL related to tokenized stocks in DeFi rose from about $21.6 million at the beginning of the year to about $289.1 million as of September 9; from July 26 to September 9, meme pools paired with stocks recorded approximately $2.49 billion and $2.90 billion in transactions on Robinhood Chain and BNB Chain, respectively. About 58.5% of early bStocks users also used adjacent products. These are transaction and usage data, not a replacement rate for the $151.9 trillion spot market.

Source: Public Information