The stock market closes on Friday afternoon. A growing number of traders apparently did not get the memo.
The median weekend-day trading volume for xStocks-issued tokenized stocks rose from $2.4 million in July to $55.2 million in September. That works out to roughly a 23-fold increase in two months, all on days when the New York Stock Exchange sits dark.
What is driving the weekend surge
xStocks is a tokenized equities platform from Backed Finance, which is associated with Kraken parent Payward. It issues SPL tokens, the standard token format on the Solana blockchain. Each token is backed 1:1 by a US stock or ETF.
Most of the trading happens on decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Raydium. DEXs are software-run marketplaces with no opening bell and no closing bell.
Raydium accounted for approximately 75% of xStocks trading activity. One venue handling three of every four trades is a concentration worth noting, and it makes Raydium the de facto weekend stock exchange for this ecosystem.
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The flagship product is SPYx, which tracks the S&P 500 ETF.
The numbers behind the growth
The weekend jump is part of a broader acceleration. xStocks passed $1 billion in 30-day DEX volume by September 15, an increase of 1,011.8% month-over-month.
The most traded assets on the platform break down like this:
- SPYx: $318.4 million
- CRCLx: $146.7 million
- NVDAx: $74.1 million
- AAPLx: $53 million
- SPCXx: $49.9 million
Tokenized equities generated $3.96 billion in weekend DEX volume in September. That figure represents a 106x increase from the previous November.
Total value locked (TVL) in tokenized equities grew from $21.6 million in January to $289 million by September.
Background: why weekends matter
Traditional stock trading follows business hours. US exchanges run on weekdays and close for weekends and holidays. When something significant breaks on a Saturday, conventional investors have to wait until Monday morning to act.
xStocks is not the only player. It operates alongside bStocks on platforms such as Uniswap and PancakeSwap, which widens the set of venues where tokenized shares can change hands.
What this means for traders and the market
Concentration risk is the second thing to watch. With Raydium handling around 75% of activity, the health of xStocks trading depends heavily on one protocol.
Looking ahead, average monthly volumes for tokenized equities are projected to land between $7.9 billion and $18 billion by year-end.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.