Coinbase's tokenized stocks have generated more than $236 million in trading volume barely a week after launch, according to Base, even as independent trackers show only about $9 million worth of the four stocks currently exists on-chain.
- Base, the Ethereum Layer-2 network incubated by Coinbase, said in a Tuesday post on X that Coinbase tokenized stocks had recorded over $236 million in volume across more than 992,000 transactions and nearly 7,390 unique holders since launching Aug. 24.
- The initial lineup consists of tokenized Apple, Alphabet, Meta and Nvidia shares.
- Coinbase says each token represents a beneficial claim on a real share held in regulated, bankruptcy-remote custody and is minted one-for-one against that underlying stock.
- The tokens can then circulate through wallets and DeFi applications on Base.
The $236 million is turnover, not $236 million on-chain
The amount of stock actually tokenized remains much smaller, though. Data from DefiLlama currently puts Coinbase's total on-chain tokenized-asset value at about $8.6 million, with roughly $3 million in NVDAc, $2 million in GOOGLc, about $1.8 million in AAPLc and $1.6 million in METAc.
- CoinGecko puts the four-token total slightly higher at roughly $9.3 million, based on their circulating supplies and current prices.
Depending on the tracker and timestamp, Base's cumulative volume figure is therefore roughly 25 to 27 times the current value of the tokens outstanding.
The same $1 of stock can be bought and sold repeatedly, particularly in automated market-maker pools, so cumulative volume can quickly exceed market capitalization.
But it does put Base's $236 million milestone in a different frame as it measures how often a relatively small pool of tokenized stock has changed hands, rather than how much investor capital has moved into the product.
The launch came with incentives
Trading also didn't begin in a vacuum as Base acknowledged at launch that third-party programs could offer incentives for trading and liquidity, while stressing that those programs are independent of Base and Coinbase.
- For instance, 1inch, a decentralized exchange aggregator, is currently offering eligible buyers 5% cashback in USDC, capped at $25 per wallet, under an eight-week campaign operated by Merkl and funded by 1inch.
- Beefy, a DeFi yield platform and Coinbase Tokenized Stocks launch partner, separately said its liquidity vaults were launched with three layers of rewards, including Aerodrome emissions, USDC incentives it described as provided by Coinbase through Merkl and additional Beefy rewards.
Base didn't explain in its X post whether it refers to addresses that currently hold the stocks, every address that has ever held them or another methodology.
The figure, therefore, can't reliably be used to infer that each holder made a particular number of trades.
The Coinformer reached out to Coinbase on the matter and will update the story if the exchange replies.
So even though Coinbase has put roughly $9 million of its first four stocks on-chain, those tokens have already been traded more than $236 million since launch.
The market is still small in capital terms, but the stock that is there is turning over remarkably fast.