Collateralized tokens account for 86.5% of tokenized stocks

Most tokenized stocks are not issued by the companies whose names they carry. They are issued by middlemen. Technically, these wrapper tokens are backed by actual shares held by a custodian. The token lives on a blockchain, while the underlying stock sits in a traditional brokerage account. Synthetic tokens are a third route. They are designed to track a stock’s price rather than represent direct ownership of the share. Custody is unusually concentrated. Alpaca custodied the underlying shares for about 83.5% of the market.