Karla Barker 
Joris Delanoue, CEO of Fairmint, says the tokenized stock boom may be heading toward a digital version of the 1960s paper crisis. Back then, Wall Street was buried in physical certificates. Clerks could not keep up with trading volume. Securities disappeared. Settlement failures piled up. The NYSE even closed on Wednesdays in 1968 just to let firms catch up. That mess eventually forced the creation of centralized depositories and the Depository Trust Company.
Ownership records can split
Delanoue worries that history may repeat, but in a different form. The problem today is not paperwork. It is fragmentation. Exchanges, special-purpose vehicles, token wrappers and proprietary ledgers can each hold a different piece of the ownership picture. As tokenized stocks grow, that could create a messy web of records.
“A token is not equity, but equity can be a token,” he said. “When equity is a token, this token has the same safeguards, guarantees and trust as you had in the previous system.” That sounds reassuring. But not every product works that way. Some tokenized stocks only give economic exposure. Legal ownership stays with an intermediary. That leaves investors dependent on a middleman. Voting, dividends and claims on assets become less certain, especially if an issuer or SPV fails.
Fast growth, small market
Tokenization of real-world assets keeps expanding. Banks, asset managers and crypto firms are putting stocks, bonds and funds on blockchain rails. Tokenized equities have become one of the more active corners. Demand is driven by people who want round-the-clock access to U.S. stocks from anywhere.
The numbers still look small. The global tokenized equity market is around $2 billion, up from less than $500 million at the end of the first quarter. Compare that to the traditional equities market, which sits above $100 trillion. So this is early, but momentum is real.
Infrastructure is catching up
Fairmint is trying to address the recordkeeping side. The company offers onchain infrastructure for issuing, managing and recording securities. It acts as an SEC-registered transfer agent, with the blockchain serving as the authoritative shareholder record. Delanoue says that kind of setup matters because the legal guarantees need to survive the move to tokens.
Bigger players are paying attention too. Bullish, the parent company of CoinDesk, agreed in May to buy transfer agent Equiniti for $4.2 billion. The goal is to add similar capabilities to its digital asset exchange.
Demand is especially strong outside the U.S. Delanoue says people underestimated how much global investors want a piece of American companies, particularly the Magnificent Seven stocks. Investors in Asia or Europe would welcome those names in their portfolios. The challenge is making sure the plumbing does not turn into another crisis while they get there.