Tokenized U.S. stocks may trade 24/7 on crypto rails, but Coin Metrics says the market still leans heavily on traditional Wall Street hours. Once U.S. equities close, trading continues on-chain and on offshore venues, yet liquidity drops, price gaps widen across platforms, and many apparent arbitrage setups do not survive slippage and spread costs.
The report was written by Cooper Duschang of Coin Metrics and translated by TechFlow.
Between Oct. 27 and Nov. 2, spot volume in tokenized U.S. equities across major exchanges exceeded $2 billion. As demand for on-chain U.S. equity exposure expanded, custodians accumulated more underlying shares and issued additional tokenized units, pushing the sector’s total market capitalization above $3 billion.
Spot activity still lagged far behind perpetual futures tied to U.S. equities. Over the past week, Hyperliquid alone generated about $12.3 billion in volume from U.S. equity index and single-stock perpetuals, around six times the $2 billion recorded by the entire tokenized stock spot market.
How tokenized stocks track the underlying shares
According to Coin Metrics, tokenized stocks are generally issued for non-U.S. investors seeking price exposure outside regulated U.S. market hours, including when Wall Street is closed. These tokens are typically issued by entities that hold the underlying shares and use regulated custodians for segregation and safekeeping, allowing the assets to trade continuously in 24/7 markets.
Using Nvidia as a case study, the report compared tokenized Nvidia products with the stock’s price in the traditional U.S. market. At present, only whitelisted institutions and market makers can mint new tokens with the issuer or redeem them for the underlying shares. For ordinary holders without whitelist access, that creates structural redemption risk and the possibility of a liquidity discount.
From Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, NVDAx issued by xStocks traded at a premium during 58.6% of regular U.S. market hours, with an average premium of 3.1 basis points. Over the same period, NVDAon issued by Ondo Stocks traded at a premium during 88.9% of regular hours, with an average premium of 14.1 basis points.
Coin Metrics also said that after last Friday’s broad market sell-off, quotes for tokenized Nvidia products fell below Friday’s closing price, reflecting early risk-off selling from offshore capital. Market fragmentation across exchanges added another layer of divergence. On Kraken, for example, NVDAx traded at an average spread of -0.9 basis points to underlying NVDA during regular market hours, a slight discount.
Lead-lag behavior during the U.S. market closure
Coin Metrics used a lead-lag model to compare price moves in NVDAx during the U.S. market closure with the next day’s opening price in the underlying Nvidia stock. The analysis covered 210 full trading days from January 2026 to the present and split the closure into three windows.
- In the after-hours session, from 16:00 to 20:00 Eastern Time, token price moves had only a weak relationship with the next morning’s stock open, with a correlation coefficient of 0.24.
- In the overnight session, from 20:00 to 04:00 ET, the correlation coefficient rose to 0.30. The signal remained weak, but it was stronger than in the immediate post-close period.
- In the premarket session, from 04:00 to 09:29 ET, NVDAx quotes moved more quickly and more steadily toward the expected opening price of underlying NVDA, with the regression R-squared rising to 0.42.
Looking at the full closure window from 16:00 to 09:30 ET, the token tracked the stock’s realized move very closely, with an R-squared of 0.98. Coin Metrics said this fits the expected effect of arbitrage: by the opening bell, NVDAx had fully converged with the underlying asset. The implication is narrow but important. Tokenized stocks are tightly anchored to the cash market at the open, yet most of that convergence happens during premarket trading, not in the first few hours after the close.
Liquidity drops sharply when Wall Street is shut
The report said tokenized stocks are highly sensitive to order flow, especially when the traditional equity market is closed. After the U.S. cash session ends, average liquidity within 1% of the mid-price in NVDAx falls by 19% on Bybit and MEXC.
On Hyperliquid, resting liquidity within 1% of the mid-price drops by about 33% during the closure. In that thinner environment, even moderately sized buy or sell orders can move the market more aggressively, increasing price distortions for the same underlying asset across venues until U.S. equities reopen.
Trading still clusters around the U.S. open and close
Tokenized stocks are marketed as a round-the-clock route to U.S. equity exposure for international investors, but the volume profile remains tied to the regular U.S. trading clock.
Data in the report shows that most activity in NVDA xStocks still concentrates around the U.S. market open and close. On weekdays between 09:00 and 10:00 ET, NVDAx averaged $225,000 in hourly volume. There is still some premarket and after-hours trading, largely tied to positioning around the opening price and digesting earnings releases or major news after the close, but the broader rhythm remains closely linked to regular U.S. market hours.
Execution costs vary by venue and issuer
Price differences for the same tokenized stock across venues mean the real cost of getting U.S. equity exposure depends heavily on where the order is executed.
For smaller trades, several exchanges can offer decent depth. For $1,000 orders measured from Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, Bybit and Hyperliquid were the best execution venue with the lowest slippage in 58% and 23% of observed time windows, respectively.
At the $100,000 trade size, liquidity concentrated quickly in the largest venues. Bybit or Hyperliquid offered the best execution in 98.2% of the observed time.
Issuer choice also mattered. During the same Oct. 27 to Nov. 2 window, NVDAb issued by Backed on Binance showed the lowest slippage among all tokenized Nvidia variants in 96% of observed samples for $10,000 orders.
Why visible arbitrage gaps often do not pay
Coin Metrics said price differences do exist across venues and across issuer-specific versions of the same tokenized stock, which creates theoretical arbitrage opportunities. In practice, though, traders have to account for order-book depth and slippage before assuming those gaps are monetizable.
Looking back from June 2026 through Nov. 2, the report found that even before fees, the combination of average bid-ask spreads and slippage was enough to erase the cross-market price gaps visible in $1,000-sized trades.
The report’s conclusion is straightforward: tokenized stocks have opened a 24/7 route for non-U.S. investors to access core U.S. equity exposure, but the market still depends heavily on traditional trading hours and still faces clear liquidity breaks when Wall Street is closed. Systematic monitoring of order-book depth, execution slippage, and fair benchmark rates remains central to comparing costs across fragmented on-chain and offshore markets and avoiding pricing traps.
