Coin Metrics research report: On-chain tokenized US stock purchases see depth drop by 30% after market close, cross-exchange price spreads unprofitable after costs

Tokenized U.S. equities have grown past $3 billion in aggregate market value across issuers including xStocks, Ondo Tokenized Stocks and bStocks, yet spot volume of roughly $2 billion in the Oct. 27–Nov. 2 window remains about one-sixth of the $12.3 billion traded in Hyperliquid's equity perpetual futures over the same week. Coin Metrics found that while these tokens quote around the clock, their pricing stays anchored to underlying shares: during market closures, 1% bid-side depth on NVDAx fell about 19% on Bybit and MEXC and roughly 33% on Hyperliquid, widening cross-venue dislocations until the U.S. open. Premiums varied by issuer and venue—NVDAx traded above NVDA shares 58.6% of regular-session time at an average 3.1 bp premium, versus 88.9% and 14.1 bp for Ondo's NVDAon, while Kraken's NVDAx averaged a 0.9 bp discount—and apparent cross-exchange spreads vanish once bid-ask costs and slippage are included. Overnight token moves carry little predictive signal for the next open (R² of 0.24 after hours and 0.30 overnight), with convergence to the real opening price occurring mainly in the pre-market window (R² 0.42) and across the full overnight cycle (R² 0.98). Trading activity clusters around the U.S. open, peaking near $225,000 per hour in the 9–10 a.m. ET window, so the key things to watch are whether off-hours depth deepens, how issuer-level premium gaps between xStocks and Ondo narrow, and whether spot volumes begin to close the gap with perpetual futures.