A single California broker holds more than $1.5 billion in shares underlying stock tokens, while the SEC warns that third-party products add intermediation risk.
Alpaca, a self-clearing California broker-dealer, states that it custodies more than $1.5 billion in shares underlying stock tokens and manages approximately 94% of the market for tokenized US equities and ETFs. The figures, as of July 2026, cover only the shares backing tokens in circulation, excluding securities held for ordinary brokerage clients.
The original promise of tokenization was disintermediation: removing the steps between an investor and a real share. The path to that share, however, converges on a single intermediary. Alpaca executes and clears trades, manages real-time minting and redemption through its Instant Tokenization Network, processes corporate actions – dividends, splits – and provides securities lending and liquidity to partners’ market makers. Among the clients cited by the company are Binance, Kraken, Ondo and Dinari, which cover the majority of products accessible to retail investors.
The SEC drew the legal boundary as early as January, distinguishing between tokens issued directly by the issuing company – which transfer the legal rights of the share – and third-party tokens, today dominant, which give the holder only economic exposure plus the intermediary’s insolvency risk. Holders of most products backed by Alpaca receive neither voting rights nor direct entitlement to dividends: their claim runs against the token issuer, not against the underlying share. The partnership with Broadridge for proxy voting is an implicit acknowledgment that these protections do not yet travel with the token.
