Behind a market capitalization of 3.7 billion dollars: dominated by overseas distribution, Alpaca became the invisible winner

According to Woofun AI, Token Terminal data shows that the tokenized stock market has surpassed 3.7 billion US dollars. Of this, about 95% track US listed stocks and ETFs, but registered issuers outside the US account for 90.4% of the market capitalization.

This phenomenon of high market capitalization and geographical misalignment reveals the 'global arbitrage' strategy adopted by issuers to circumvent regulatory barriers. When a single jurisdiction tightens policies, related activities quickly moved to more open regions, indicating that the tokenization process did not stall due to local resistance, but rather accelerated penetration through a decentralized layout.

This dynamic not only reflects capital's pursuit of efficiency, but also highlights that in the current context of fragmented global regulations, cross-border issuance has become the mainstream path for tokenized stocks.

Judging from the distribution pattern and user distribution, the jurisdictional game showed obvious multi-polarization characteristics. Jersey led with a 28.9% share, followed by Abu Dhabi with 27.4%, and the British Virgin Islands ranked third with 26.3%.

Notably, even American giants such as Coinbase (COIN.US) and Robinhood (HOOD.US) have chosen to issue tokens overseas to bypass strict domestic securities regulations. Of the 5 million tokenized stock holders, 97.8% held shares issued outside the US, while only 2.2% were issued within the US. As for top players, Jersey's xStocks and Robinhood (HOOD.US) issuers have a total of 2.4 million holders, Abu Dhabi's Binance bStocks and Coinbase (COIN.US) have 1.5 million holders, and the British Virgin Islands' Ondo and Backpack have 8947 million holders.

Although the latter has a smaller number of holders, its average holdings are larger, indicating institutional funding's preference for specific foreign issuers. This distribution shows that no single jurisdiction has absolute dominance, and that any partial ban will only change the distribution model and cannot stop the overall market from expanding.

On-chain activity and DeFi penetration rate further validate the dominance of overseas issuances. Of the $271.7 billion deposit in DeFi lending markets, vaults, and DEX pools, 90.4% is made up of tokenized stocks issued outside of the US.

According to data compiled by Woofun AI, Jersey's xStocks and Robinhood (HOOD.US) issuers together account for $176.9 million, or 65.1% of DeFi stock. In contrast, Ondo, the largest issuer in the British Virgin Islands with a market capitalization of $951 million, has a stock of only about $3 million in the DeFi sector, which reveals that there is no direct positive correlation between market capitalization size and actual DeFi utilization. Over the past 30 days, on-chain transactions reached $14.4 billion, of which 99.3% of tokenized shares were issued outside the US. Jersey issuers xStocks and Robinhood (HOOD.US) traded a total of $6.7 billion, while Abu Dhabi issuers Binance bStocks and Coinbase (COIN.US) traded a total of $6 billion, while the total amount of transactions in tokenized stocks issued by the US was only $104.5 million, although US issuers accounted for 9.6% of the market capitalization.

This comparative data clearly shows that the vast majority of on-chain transactions revolve around assets issued overseas, and that domestic US issuance is still marginal in terms of liquidity.

The monopoly pattern of underlying infrastructure points to Alpaca, the real hidden winner. Although Ondo, xStocks, Binance bStocks, Robinhood (HOOD.US), Coinbase (COIN.US), and Reality are each issued in four different countries or regions and are subject to different laws and regulators, they all designate the US broker-dealer Alpaca as the custodian of the underlying stocks. Alpaca controls the escrow share of 83.5% of the tokenized stock market value, making it an indispensable infrastructure provider for the entire ecosystem.

This centralized hosting model has given Alpaca huge market control in a seemingly fragmented distribution landscape. However, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently issued an innovation exemption, the US market is gradually opening up to tokenized stocks.

This sign of regulatory loosening may prompt issuers to shift their focus back to the US and follow the logic of prioritizing tokenization into the largest markets. At that time, Alpaca's monopoly position may face challenges, and other competitive custodians may seek opportunities to reshape the competitive landscape of underlying asset custody.