According to new data from South Africa’s leading digital assets app Luno, tokenised stocks and ETFs are attracting first-time investors to the US market. Luno has just reached 50,000 xStocks (tokenised stocks) customers since the launch in August 2025. xStocks are digital representations of popular US shares and ETFs.
The top five most popular buys by volume are:
- Tesla (TSLAx)
- Gold ETFs (GLDx)
- Nvidia (NVDAx)
- MicroStrategy (MSTRx)
- S&P 500 ETF (SPYx).
The mix reflects a blend of high-conviction tech companies, macro hedging via gold, and broad index exposure.
Adoption has been rapid, says Christo de Wit, Luno’s country manager for South Africa. “xStocks customers hold a combined R200 million in tokenised equity assets on Luno. Around 15% of these investors are entirely new to Luno and came for tokenised stocks,” he says.
The average xStocks customer made their first investment of around R1,500 and has since accumulated an average of R6,600 in tokenised stocks across almost three positions, a fourfold increase that suggests customers are returning to the platform rather than making a single speculative trade. “Investors are clearly coming back, adding to their holdings and branching into new stocks over time. This kind of behaviour aligns with portfolio-building rather than one-off speculation,’ says de Wit.
Who is investing
The demographic profile of xStocks users is younger and even more male than SA’s broader investing public. Almost half of tokenised stock investors on Luno are 34 and younger. These investors grew up with crypto; they’re comfortable doing things differently, and tokenised stocks are just the next logical step for them. Male customers account for 68% of xStocks users.
Geographically, Gauteng dominates with 42% of xStocks customers, followed by the Western Cape at 25% and KwaZulu-Natal at 13%, a distribution that broadly mirrors broader fintech and investment app adoption patterns in South Africa.
Bridging digital and traditional investment assets
There is strong cross-asset adoption on the platform. Around 86% of xStocks customers also hold crypto assets on Luno, signalling that investors are increasingly comfortable investing across the boundary between digital assets and real-world equities.
Luno manages more than R30 billion in crypto holdings for its South African customer base. The R200 million in tokenised stock assets represents a small but fast-growing second pillar.
Tokenised stocks offer easier access and solve issues that have historically locked out South Africans from global markets, such as high forex fees, offshore allowance headaches and US trading-hours restrictions.
“The uptake tells us that South African investors were ready for something better. They can wake up on a Monday morning, invest R500 in Tesla or the S&P 500 in rands, before their first cup of coffee, from their phone, just as easily as buying Bitcoin,” says de Wit.
