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What is a tokenized stock?
The same company, bought a different way. Here is what that gets you.
A crypto token that tracks a real share
A company buys an actual Apple share, locks it away, and gives you a token that moves with the price. You hold the token, not the share — it sits in your own wallet, next to your crypto.
Never closes
Buy on a Saturday night if you want to. Traditional: weekdays, 9:30am to 4pm New York
Settles at once
Yours as soon as it confirms. Traditional: the next business day
Nothing to open
A wallet and some stablecoins is the whole requirement. Traditional: paperwork, minimums, and they can say no
Buy a slice
Of a $310 Apple share, from a dollar up. Traditional: often the whole share
You hold the keys
And lending apps will take it as security if you want to borrow without selling. Traditional: held in an account someone else runs
The three platforms
Let's compare Base, xStocks and Ondo
No single winner. What separates them is how many companies you can buy, and how easily you can turn the token back into money.
- Companies
- 4
- Buy from
- Exchange only
- Sell back to issuer
- Never
A real share is ring-fenced in a separate company, so trouble at Coinbase shouldn't reach it. The strongest promise of the three — but you can't act on it yourself.
- Companies
- 100+
- Buy from
- Exchange, no wallet
- Sell back to issuer
- From $5,000
A formal IOU from a Jersey company, backed one-for-one by shares it holds. Redeemable — but the $5,000 floor makes that a serious undertaking.
- Companies
- 440+
- Buy from
- Issuer, no fee
- Sell back to issuer
- From $1
The bluntest wording, the best practical protection: an independent firm holds a legal claim over the shares and can sell them to pay holders if Ondo defaults.
| Coinbase on BaseLive since Aug 2026 | xStocksLive since Jun 2025 | OndoLive since 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who issues it | Coinbase, through a separate company set up to hold the shares | Backed, a company based in Jersey | Ondo Finance, through a company in the British Virgin Islands |
| Who regulates it | Abu Dhabi's financial regulator | Sold through licensed distributors in Bermuda and Cyprus | Liechtenstein's financial regulator |
| Companies you can buy | 4 Nvidia, Meta, Apple, Alphabet | 100+ shares and funds | 440+ shares and funds, including the S&P 500 |
| Sell it back to the issuer | No only authorised partner firms can do this, not individuals | Yes $5,000 minimum, after an ID check | Yes $1 minimum, after an ID check |
| Fee to buy new tokens from the issuer | Not offered to individuals. Partner firms pay about 1¢ per $1,000. | Varies by company each token sets its own, listed in its paperwork | No fee |
| Getting your money back out | You sell to another buyer, at whatever price the market offers | Up to five business days | Almost instant, paid in stablecoins |
| What happens to dividends | Never paid to you in cash. The dividend buys more shares, so your token is worth a little more. Coinbase keeps 5%, then the US government withholds tax (30% for most people outside America). Whatever is left gets reinvested. | Never paid to you in cash. The dividend buys more shares, so your token is worth a little more. The US government withholds tax first (30% for most people outside America). Whatever is left gets reinvested. | Never paid to you in cash. The dividend buys more shares, so your token is worth a little more. The US government withholds tax first (30% for most people outside America). Whatever is left gets reinvested. |
| Vote as a shareholder | No | No | No |
| Borrow against it | Yes on lending apps that accept it | Yes on lending apps that accept it | Yes on lending apps that accept it |
| Move it between networks | No it only exists on Base | Yes Solana, BNB Chain, Tron and Ethereum | No, but it exists on three Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana, issued separately on each, so you pick one when you buy |
| Proof the real shares exist | A regulated custodian, plus published paperwork | The issuer reports on its own holdings | An outside firm checks and publishes every working day |
| Where the real shares sit | With a regulated custodian, kept separate from Coinbase itself | Held by the issuer, one real share for every token | With US-registered brokers or US trust companies |
How to read those little bars
They are our own judgement, not anyone's official rating. We scored two things together: how strong the promise is on paper, and how easily you could actually act on it. Coinbase is strong on the first and weak on the second. Ondo is the opposite, with the least reassuring wording but the best practical protections. Nobody gets full marks, because in every case you are relying on an offshore company rather than owning the share in your own name.
What it costs
Almost nobody tells you this bit
Extra cost on top of the real share price when buying $10,000 of each stock. For comparison, an ordinary stockbroker would charge you around $1.00.
Why these numbers don't tell the whole story
This measures one way of buying: picking up the token second-hand on a crypto exchange. For Coinbase that is your only option, so the number is exactly what you'd pay. For xStocks and Ondo there is a cheaper route this chart cannot see, which is buying new tokens straight from the issuer. The next section explains the difference.
Why the price differs
Where the premium comes from
Every token is backed by the same real share, so the gap has nothing to do with the company. Four things explain all of it.
You are buying from other holders, not from the issuer
On a crypto exchange the issuer is not selling to you. Other people are, out of a limited supply they set aside for trading.
Your order takes the cheapest tokens first, then works up. Whatever you end up paying above the real share price is the premium.
The bigger the order, the worse the price
A small order never gets past the cheap tokens. A large one uses them up and fills the rest higher. On Apple, $1,000 cost about $1.19 extra while $100,000 cost about $726.
How much is on offer varies a lot
Some platforms keep one deep, well stocked supply. Others spread the same tokens thinly across several networks and exchanges. Thinner supply means a bigger premium, for exactly the same share on exactly the same day.
Buying direct from the issuer sidesteps all of it
Ask the issuer instead and it creates a brand new token for you, backed by a real share it buys at that moment. There is no limited supply to work through, so the premium stays small however much you buy: on Apple, roughly $20 on a $100,000 order against $726 through an exchange. Not every platform offers it, and the comparison table above shows which do.
One last thing: premiums are higher when the US market is shut, because sellers cannot replace what they sell until it reopens. Our figures were taken after the close, so they sit at the high end.
Soon you'll be able to do all this inside Kite
We're building tokenised investing into the app: a curated selection of stocks, ETFs and gold, bought and sold straight from the stablecoin balance you already hold. No separate broker, no swapping, no routing decisions.
Buy and sell in a few taps
Choose an asset, enter an amount, done. None of the network-picking or price-comparing this page has been about.
A portfolio kept separate
Your holdings sit apart from your everyday spending balance, so you can see what you have without the two getting tangled.
More than a balance
Average purchase price, profit and loss, portfolio value over time, and how each individual holding is performing.
Set it and forget it
Schedule daily, weekly or monthly contributions and build a position automatically rather than trying to time it.
Not live yet, and we have not published pricing or an issuer for it, so it is deliberately absent from the comparison above. When it launches we will measure it on exactly the same basis as the other three and publish the result here, favourable or not.
Six things to know before you buy
You're trusting a company, not owning a share
Every one of these is a promise from a company registered offshore. If it failed, getting your money back would depend on how well the shares were ring-fenced, not on your name being on a share register.
Premiums get worse when Wall Street is closed
Price-setters can't hedge properly outside US trading hours, so they charge more. Our figures were taken after the close, which is part of why the bigger numbers look as big as they do.
No shareholder vote
None of the three pass on your right to vote at company meetings. If having a say matters, these are the wrong product.
Check the address
Anyone can create a fake token called NVDAc. Check it against the issuer's official list before you confirm.
Dividends get taxed before you see them
The dividend buys more shares rather than paying cash, so your token quietly gains value. But the US withholds 30% for most people outside America, and Coinbase keeps a further 5%.
The rules can change on you
These are sold under exemptions that vary by country and can be withdrawn. Owning the token also doesn't let you cash it in until you complete an ID check with the issuer.
Swipe for all six
How we checked this — every figure, and where it came from
Facts come from each company's own website, legal paperwork and help pages. Nothing is estimated unless we say so, and where a company doesn't publish a figure the table says that rather than guessing.
About the price figures. They are a single snapshot taken while the US market was shut, not a live feed and not a quote you can act on. Premiums move a lot from hour to hour and are always higher after hours. The $1k and $100k views are calculated from the $10k figures to show how cost grows with size; we did not measure those separately. Treat the ranking as a guide and check the real price before you buy.
Our interest in this, declared. Kite is building its own tokenised investing product, described above. That gives us a commercial interest in this category, so treat this as research published by an interested party rather than a neutral referee, and check the figures yourself. What we have done to keep it straight: every claim links to the issuer's own material, we published the route that makes our eventual competitors look best rather than the one that flatters a single venue, and our product is left out of the comparison because it isn't live and has no published pricing to measure.
Please note. This page is research and information only. It is not investment advice or a recommendation, and it isn't an offer to sell you anything. Kite doesn't issue or sell any of the three products compared here and isn't paid by any of them. Tokenized stocks are not shares: you're relying on an offshore company, and you take on that company's risk as well as the ordinary risk of the stock market going down. None of the three are available to people in the United States, and other countries are restricted too. Read the official paperwork before you invest, and speak to a qualified adviser if you're unsure.
Questions
Tokenized stocks, answered
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