Pokémon cards beat bitcoin 28% as platforms tokenize $13B market

Pokémon cards gained 28% in 2026, beating the S&P 500 and bitcoin, as platforms tokenize a $13 billion to $15 billion market.

"Access to JTCC's supply, one of the world's largest liquidity streams in the trading card space, gives Deadstock an unfair advantage most platforms can never reach," Dominic Jang, co-founder of ATH Labs, said.

Courtyard, the best-known platform, processes roughly $139 million of volume over 30 days and runs at an annualized fee of about $48 million, according to DeFiLlama data. Collector-Crypto reports $148.2 million in annualized fees and $77.8 million in 30-day volume, while Phygitals shows $15.2 million and $7.4 million, respectively. eBay, the incumbent, processed $2.62 billion in trading card sales in 2025.

The harder question is whether enough collectors will trade tokens rather than list cards on eBay, take them to a convention, or keep them in a binder. House of Chimera, a crypto research firm, found much of today's on-chain volume stems from gamified pack openings and instant buybacks rather than organic peer-to-peer trades.

Vault-and-mint model targets 1990s-era friction

The vault-and-mint model authenticates a card, locks it in a secure facility, and mints a one-to-one token on a blockchain such as Arbitrum or Polygon. Ownership changes hands in seconds while the physical asset stays in storage until an owner burns the token to request delivery. ATH Labs' Deadstock runs a closed beta on Arbitrum featuring PSA-10 graded Pokémon cards, betting the next stage of growth depends less on new issuance than on making existing cards easier to trade, finance and use as collateral.

Supply access and the eBay hurdle

ATH has partnered with Japan Trading Card Center (JTCC), which operates a large Japanese marketplace for mystery card packs, to secure exclusive tokenization access to its inventory and sourcing network. JTCC booked about 2.4 billion yen in profit for the period from December 2024 to November 2025. Jang said JTCC's scale gives ATH access to a continuously replenished pool of cards that would be difficult for a new Western platform to replicate.

The tokenization push mirrors the on-chain logic applied to gold, Treasury bills and private credit — using blockchain to cut transfer costs and speed settlement. But whether the model scales depends on building a deep order book rather than simply moving collectibles on-chain. Asia-based MemeStrategy has also entered the market, claiming to have launched the world's first tokenized Pokémon trading card fund for professional investors.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.