A 140% surge in months: The new market driving investor interest
A new research report by DeFiLlama reveals that the active market capitalization of stock tokens has nearly doubled to $2 billion. Which exchange is leading the revolution?
Bitget, the world's largest Universal Exchange (UEX), has presented key findings from a new independent research report by DeFiLlama, which examines the rapid growth and evolving structure of the stock token market.
According to the report, the active market capitalization of stock tokens grew by more than 140% in 2026, rising from $814 million at the start of the year to nearly $2 billion at the time of publication. The research evaluates how leading platforms are evolving in terms of market structure, liquidity, clearing, and execution quality as adoption accelerates.
The report assesses leading platforms across areas such as broker integration, proof of reserves, dividend handling, and trading infrastructure. DeFiLlama's analysis found that Bitget recorded the lowest median bid-ask spread at 0.83 basis points and the highest liquidity at the top of the order book across all five stock token markets tested.
In its broader performance index, covering 36 long-term stock contracts and indices of eight commodities, Bitget led across depth measurements of 5, 10, and 50 basis points, while also recording the largest cumulative order book depth. The findings suggest that as infrastructure matures, execution quality and liquidity are becoming increasingly critical differentiators between platforms.
"A stock that has undergone a tokenization process is only as good as the market behind it. Investors don't care how the asset is packaged if they cannot trade it efficiently," said Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget. "That is why liquidity and execution matter. DeFiLlama found that Bitget recorded the lowest median bid-ask spread and the highest liquidity in the markets they evaluated. As this market grows, these are the things investors will increasingly expect."
The report also highlights adoption trends for Bitget's Reality Tokens, which generated a cumulative trading volume of over $1.16 billion between June and July. Assets related to the semiconductor and technology sectors accounted for the majority of activity, underscoring the sustained demand for token-based exposure to innovation-driven public companies.
