The tokenized stock market, promoted as a decentralized alternative to traditional brokers, remains concentrated around a single entity: Alpaca, a California brokerage custodies more than $1.5 billion in underlying shares and processes roughly 94% of operations. Alpaca raised $135 million in July, bringing its total funding to $435 million including debt. The SEC has warned about intermediary risks inherent to third-party tokens, a caution reinforced by the SpaceX incident in June, when more than $1 billion in pre-IPO tokens were sold but never delivered. DTCC’s October launch of its own tokenization service could reshape the market, although Alpaca claims it has already integrated this infrastructure.
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