18 September 2023: Swarm, a compliant DeFi platform, has released six month trading activity data for its tokenized public stocks and bond ETFs, revealing retail investors’ favorite tokenized assets.
After six months of trading, Coinbase is the most popular asset among retail investors, followed by Tesla and Apple stocks (full table below). Swarm’s is the only liquidity venue where tokenized assets can be traded on a compliant and decentralized infrastructure.
Philipp Pieper, Swarm co-founder, said “Those looking at tokenization strategies should be examining this data with interest. There is a big difference between what people say they want to trade and what they actually do, and this data indicates where retail investor interest actually lies in tokenized products. Retail investors are gravitating to well-understood names like Apple and Tesla, dipping their toe into trading tokenized products and the benefits that come with that, such as self custody, no market hours and transparency.
“We have already seen CEO’s like Brian Armstrong make comments about the need for trading venues where all asset classes can be traded alongside one another. We have that today on Swarm.”
| Rank by trading volume | Asset | Token tracker |
| 1 | Coinbase | COIN |
| 2 | Tesla | TSLA |
| 3 | Apple | AAPL |
| 4 | iShares US treasury bond 1-3 year ETF | TBONDS13 |
| 5 | iShares US treasury bond 0-1 year ETF | TBONDS01 |
| 6 | Microstrategy | MSTR |
| 7 | Blackrock | BLK |
| 8 | Intel | INTC |
| = 9 | NVIDIA | NVDA |
| = 9 | Coupang | CPNG |
| = 9 | Microsoft | MSFT |
Timo Lehes, Swarm co-founder, said: “A lot of platforms have solved for issuance but no one has solved trading. We have seen an explosion of tokenized US Treasuries and other securities in the past few months but how people get out of these positions when market conditions change will be interesting. You either trade out of your position or redeem for the underlying – both of these options are limited in other offerings and that’s where we see the benefit of having a compliant liquidity solution.”
“Furtherstill, what happens if those tokens fall into the wrong hands if there is unrestricted selling? A compliant approach is by far the most protective one for both retail and institutional investors.“
Swarm’s tokenized assets are prospectus-based and can be sold to both retail and institutional investors. Since launching tokenized stocks and bond ETFs on February 23, 2023, the platform has seen a 41% increase in the number of new users. The average age of users is 37 and top countries where they are coming from include:
- UK
- Germany
- Indonesia
- Turkey
- Australia
Pieper added, “If you are in Australia or Indonesia, no market hours become very important. We’re seeing interest in our white labeling solution not only from institutions in the West that need compliance, but also those who are servicing clients in Asia and Australia. Places that are plagued by hyperinflation or where people cannot easily onboard to the likes of a Robinhood to access global markets are the product market fit for tokenized securities.”
All growth is organic. Swarm does not actively market to customers beyond posting news and analysis on its social media channels.
Swarm values transparency and investor protection above all else, and as such are providing monthly disclosures to provide assurance that the amount of underlying assets held in custody are in line with the amount of Stock Certificate Tokens in circulation on the blockchain each month. All disclosures are publicly available on the SwarmX docs page, the issuing entity for tokenized security tokens.
ENDS
About Swarm
Swarm is a blockchain platform that brings novel digitization and trading solutions to the world of traditional finance. It is the first organization in the world to offer digitized treasury bills and Apple stock via a compliant and decentralized platform. Day to day, we work with real-world-asset owners to tokenize collateral and build trading infrastructure in a compliant way.
Swarm is a hybrid, embracing the advantages of blockchain-trading – flexibility, speed and efficiency – and pairing it with the trust and asset-range typically enjoyed by traditional exchanges. Swarm aims to integrate TradFi with DeFi so that everything becomes “Fi”. For more information, visit the website.
