The numbers are brutal for anyone chasing new token listings. A Delphi Consulting study of 652 tokens that hit Binance, Bybit, Coinbase, Gate.io, and Kraken between January 2025 and May 2026 found a 12% win rate, a median return of negative 82%, and 52% of tokens losing more than 80% of their value. The user who bought every new listing? They kept roughly 50 cents on the dollar.
Where the money is going instead
Tokenized stocks are eating the listing market's lunch. Across Kraken's xStocks, Robinhood EU, and Coinbase's in-app stock trading, distributed value hit $1.48 billion as of June 1 — up 39% in the last 30 days alone. Monthly transfer volume reached $4.2 billion. Kraken offers over 100 tokenized stocks and ETFs with 24/5 trading and $1 minimums. Robinhood EU lists more than 2,000 Stock Tokens, including Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple, for as little as €1. Coinbase lets US users trade stocks with zero commission, USDC funding, and fractional shares.
The structural pressure on long-tail tokens
Binance Research points to a deeper problem: equity ownership outside the US runs below 20%, compared to 62% inside the country. The gap is infrastructure. Some AI-cycle stocks traded above $1,000 per share at times when average monthly wages in parts of Africa and Southern Asia were below $300. Without fractional shares, those stocks were off-limits. Tokenized stocks solve that — and they give crypto users a competing asset class inside the same app. That's demand that would have gone to new token listings.
Institutional allocators rotating from Bitcoin ETFs into AI equities and retail users picking tokenized stocks over new listings are squeezing long-tail tokens from both ends. Binance Research projects crypto exchanges could channel $2 trillion in incremental capital and nearly 300 million new users into global equity markets by 2031 under a base case — $5 trillion in a bull case.
What this means for exchanges
Exchanges that offer tokenized stocks are becoming TradFi distributors on crypto infrastructure. They capture stock trading revenue while their native listing business shrinks. Stablecoins already remove an average of 3.6% and about $40 per transaction in cross-border off-ramp costs, and TradFi-linked perpetuals account for roughly 10% of stablecoin trading volume. The economics are shifting.
The question now is whether the major listing exchanges will lean harder into tokenized stocks — or try to revive the native token pipeline before the next cycle. The data suggests the listing model as it stands isn't working for most users.
