Key takeaways
- Backed's NVDAx and Ondo's NVDAON are each backed one-for-one by Nvidia shares, yet their prices are not always aligned - different issuing entities, custody arrangements and liquidity pools.
- Backing is not the same as convertibility. Redeeming NVDAx for real shares through Backed's xPort requires completing KYC and AML onboarding with both the issuer and the brokerage first.
- Tracking is tightest when enforcing it is cheapest: cross-token arbitrage peaks between 13:00 and 15:00 UTC, around the US open, when the underlying Nvidia liquidity is deepest.
- Three different products share the name. Issuer-native equity, custodially wrapped equity, and perpetual futures - and the perps are by far the largest, around $6.3bn of Nvidia volume versus roughly $90m of NVDAx market cap.
- A weekend price is not a clean read on Monday's open. It mixes expectation with wrapper risk, pool imbalance and thin liquidity, and cannot be separated into those parts from the outside.
Here is a fact that should be more unsettling than it is.
Backed's NVDAx and Ondo's NVDAON are both tokenized Nvidia. Both are backed one-for-one by real Nvidia shares. Neither is a derivative, neither is synthetic, and in both cases the shares genuinely exist.
Their prices are not always the same.
If one-for-one backing were sufficient to produce the share price, that could not happen. The two tokens would be interchangeable and would trade identically. They do not, and the reason is the single most useful thing to understand about tokenized anything.
Backing and convertibility are different properties
Backing tells you what sits in a vault. Convertibility tells you who can get it out, how quickly, and at what cost. Only the second one sets the price.
A token tracks its underlying because somebody can profitably destroy the token to claim the share, or create a new token by delivering one. When the token drifts above the share, that person creates and sells. When it drifts below, they buy and redeem. The gap closes because closing it pays.
Remove that person and the backing does not go anywhere - it just stops doing any work. The vault is still full. The price is now whatever the order book says, because nothing connects the two.
So the question that matters is never "is it backed". It is: who is allowed through the door, and how wide is the door?
How narrow the door actually is
For NVDAx, holders can redeem for the underlying shares through Backed's xPort service - but only after completing KYC and AML onboarding with the issuer and with the brokerage.
Read that as a cost rather than a formality. It is a one-off barrier that makes no sense to clear for a small holding, and it means the population able to enforce the peg is much smaller than the population holding the token. Coverage elsewhere has mentioned high minimum subscription sizes for primary creation on some platforms; I was not able to verify a specific figure from a primary source, so treat the exact threshold as unknown and the direction as clear.
The two tokens differ in issuing entity, custody and liquidity pool. Each of those is a separate reason the enforcement cost differs between them - and when enforcement costs differ, prices differ, even with identical backing.
The tell: the peg is tightest when it is cheapest
This is the part that confirms the mechanism rather than merely describing it.
Arbitrage between the two tokens peaks between 13:00 and 15:00 UTC - around the US open, when Nvidia's own liquidity is deepest and the trade is easiest to execute. Tracking is at its best precisely in the window when correcting a gap is cheapest.
Which means tracking is worst in the mirror image of that window: weekends, overnight, and whenever the underlying market is shut and the arbitrage cannot be completed at all. NVDAx weekend volume averages around 41% of its weekday volume, against roughly 17% for NVDAON - so there is real trading happening in exactly the hours when the corrective mechanism is unavailable.
A peg that holds when it is convenient and slips when it is not is not a property of the asset. It is a service, performed by parties you have no contract with, who are under no obligation to perform it, and who will stop the moment it stops paying.
Three products, one name
"Tokenized stocks" covers at least three things, and conflating them is where most confusion starts. One useful framing splits them into issuer-native equity, custodially wrapped equity, and derivative exposure - moving along that spectrum buys accessibility and flexibility at the cost of actual ownership and shareholder rights.
The sizes are worth sitting with. NVDAx is around 431,000 tokenized shares, roughly $90m. NVDAON is around 95,000. Nvidia perpetual futures have seen about $6.3bn of volume - more than forty times the tokenized spot markets.
So the dominant form of "tokenized Nvidia" exposure holds no Nvidia at all. A perpetual future has no claimable underlying; its price is tracked through an oracle feed and pulled toward that reference by the funding rate, where longs and shorts exchange a payment at set intervals so that a perp trading above its reference costs longs money until it comes back down.
That is a perfectly reasonable instrument. It is simply not the same instrument, and the distinction disappears entirely in the phrase used to sell both.
What a weekend price is telling you
When the underlying market is closed, a perp's participants set the price directly rather than following a reference. One study of Korean equities found overnight perp direction matched the next session's open about 85% of the time, with weekend direction matching the Monday open 93% of the time for one name and 87% for another.
Two cautions before anyone does anything with that. It is a study of Korean names, not US ones, and a directional match rate is not a statement about any particular weekend. More importantly, a weekend premium or discount is a blend: part expectation about the reopen, part wrapper risk, part pool imbalance, part thin liquidity. From outside you cannot decompose it, so reading it as a pure signal about the reopen means attributing the whole gap to the one component you find most interesting.
The questions worth asking
If you hold or are considering a tokenized equity, the useful checks are not about the chain:
Who can redeem, and what does it cost them? That population is the peg. If it is small or the onboarding is expensive, expect wider drift.
Can you redeem? If not, you hold something whose price depends on other people's convenience.
Which of the three products is it? Issuer-native, wrapped, or a perp with no underlying.
What are the shareholder rights? Price exposure and ownership are not the same purchase, and further along that spectrum you have less of the second.
None of this is an argument against the instruments. Tight tracking during deep-liquidity hours is a real achievement, and a reported drift measured in fractions of a percent is not a broken product. It is an argument against reading "fully backed" as though it settled the question of what the thing is worth.
We have been here before. Sixteen companies blocked tokens that held their own shares, and those tokens were fully backed too - backing did not help, because the issuer's permission was the binding constraint. And the difference between assets being held for you and a claim you can actually enforce is the same distinction wearing different clothes.
Backing is a fact about a vault. What you own is a fact about a contract. What you can sell it for is a fact about who else can open the door.
Figures here come from the cited analyses rather than my own measurement, and single-source numbers in a young market should be treated as indicative. This is education, not investment advice.
Frequently asked questions
If a token is backed one-for-one, why does its price differ from the share?
Because backing and convertibility are different things. The price tracks the share only while somebody can profitably create or redeem against the real asset. Backed's NVDAx and Ondo's NVDAON are each backed one-for-one by Nvidia shares and still are not always aligned, because they differ in issuing entity, custody and liquidity pool - all of which change how costly that correction is.
Can an ordinary holder redeem a tokenized share?
For NVDAx, redemption through Backed's xPort requires completing KYC and AML onboarding with both the issuer and the brokerage first. That is a fixed cost which rarely makes sense for a small position, so in practice the group that can enforce the peg is much smaller than the group holding the token.
Why is tracking worse at weekends?
The correction depends on transacting in the underlying, which is not possible when the market is closed. Arbitrage between the tokens peaks around 13:00 to 15:00 UTC, near the US open, when the underlying liquidity is deepest - and trading continues at weekends, when that mechanism is unavailable.
Does a weekend premium tell you where the stock will reopen?
Not cleanly. A study of Korean equities found overnight perp direction matched the next open around 85% of the time, but a weekend gap blends expectation with wrapper risk, pool imbalance and thin liquidity, and those components cannot be separated from the outside. It is also a different market from US equities.
What is the difference between a tokenized stock and a stock perpetual future?
A fully collateralised token has a real share behind it and, subject to eligibility, a claim on it. A perpetual future has no claimable underlying - its price follows an oracle feed and is pulled toward that reference by funding payments between longs and shorts. Nvidia perps have seen far more volume than the tokenized spot markets.
Are tokenized equities badly designed, then?
No. Tracking within fractions of a percent during deep-liquidity hours is a genuine achievement. The point is narrower: 'fully backed' describes what is held, not what the token is worth, and the gap between those two is set by who can convert and at what cost.
Sources
Every figure and quote above traces to one of these. Checked on publication day.
- talos.com — State of the Network: The Spectrum of Tokenized Stock Exposure - Talos
- reports.tiger-research.com — 2026 Tokenized Stock Market: The Rise of Perpetual Futures - Tiger Research
- coingecko.com — Tokenized Stock Perpetuals and Price Discovery - CoinGecko
- coinpaprika.com — Do Tokenized Stocks Track the Real Share Price? Premium, Discount and the Weekend Gap - CoinPaprika
Deepmoni Das, Editor
I read the primary filings, exchange notices and post-mortems behind each story and write up what they actually say — with every source linked so you can check me. I am not a trader and I do not hold positions in anything covered here. Research and drafting are AI-assisted; the sourcing, the edits and the mistakes are mine.
Not financial advice. Crypto assets are volatile and unregulated in many jurisdictions. In India, gains are taxed at 30% with 1% TDS on transfers. Do your own research and never invest money you cannot afford to lose.
Editorial note: Crypto Shakti uses an AI-assisted research and drafting workflow. Every article is grounded in the linked primary sources and live market data captured at publication time.