TL;DR:
- Tokenized stocks approach $3 billion in on-chain value, while weekly trading nears $3 billion and pre-IPO trading reached roughly $12 billion in June.
- Binance Research estimates more than $225 billion in U.S. IPO proceeds for 2026, while its pre-IPO perpetual products reached $2.5 billion in 18 days.
- Traditional exchanges are also advancing tokenization, but voting rights, legal ownership, registration, disclosure and investor protections remain critical distinctions for investors and issuers.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao says public offerings will eventually migrate onto blockchains, a prediction arriving as tokenized stocks approach $3 billion in on-chain value. The market has expanded, with tokenized equities rising about 14% over the past month and weekly trading nearing $3 billion. The striking part is that investor demand appears to be developing before on-chain IPOs become standard, with pre-IPO trading reaching roughly $12 billion in June as private companies such as SpaceX and OpenAI attracted interest. That backdrop gives Zhao’s forecast a market already moving toward digital access.
IPOs will move on chain.
— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) September 8, 2026
Traditional IPO structures often leave investors waiting until public trading begins, while early allocations pass through underwriters and institutional relationships. Blockchain issuance could reshape that model by dividing shares into smaller units, distributing them digitally and potentially allowing around-the-clock trading. The appeal is not limited to tokenized versions of companies already listed on public markets, because Binance Research estimated more than $225 billion in U.S. IPO proceeds for 2026, while its pre-IPO perpetual products reached $2.5 billion in cumulative volume within 18 days. Notably, 88% of users came from emerging markets.
Traditional Exchanges Move Toward On-Chain Capital Markets
Europe has already produced an early example of what this transition might look like. France’s ST Group completed what was described as Europe’s first fully on-chain IPO in April through the regulated Lise exchange, combining issuance, trading, settlement and shareholder records on blockchain infrastructure. The shift is no longer confined to crypto-native platforms, as traditional exchanges are moving in the same direction. The New York Stock Exchange filed rule changes in April to permit tokenized securities trading, while Nasdaq received SEC approval in March for its tokenized-securities framework, adding institutional weight to Zhao’s argument about on-chain capital markets.
Still, tokenization does not automatically make every product equivalent to a conventional share. Some stock tokens merely track the economics of an underlying equity without necessarily granting voting rights or legal ownership. That legal distinction could ultimately determine whether on-chain IPOs become a mainstream financing model rather than a parallel trading structure. The SEC has emphasized that moving a share onto a blockchain does not change its status as a security, meaning registration, disclosure and investor-protection obligations continue to apply. As tokenized equities spread across Robinhood, BNB Chain and Solana, product structure may matter as much as trading volume.
