Web3 Lawyer Analysis: Where is the Future of U.S. Stock Tokenization?

The power of SpaceX's narrative is something that anyone who has paid even a little attention to Musk's Starlink and Mars colonization stories can likely feel. Many friends who previously had no interest in the US stock market have privately messaged Crypto Salad, wanting to know how to enter the US stock market. For us Chinese residents, directly entering the market is a process with barriers. Therefore, many people have reignited their enthusiasm for "tokenized US stocks." Crypto Salad will not provide any investment advice or recommendations here. As always, we will break down and thoroughly explain the underlying logic of US stock tokenization. The rest is for you to judge for yourselves.

In the previous article ("Global Listing, 24-Hour Stock Trading? Analyzing the NYSE's On-Chain 'Open Scheme'"), we detailed what kind of tokenized US stock platform the NYSE aims to build and deeply analyzed its underlying logic. If US stock tokenization was largely confined to Web3 exploration and experimentation over the past year, then Nasdaq and the NYSE formally launching their tokenized stock initiatives in 2026 has completely ended this "self-congratulatory" phase within the circle. The Berlin Wall between US stocks and crypto assets has, in fact, already crumbled. We previously dissected the technical elements of the NYSE platform, including designs like 7×24 trading, fractional share mechanisms, stablecoin-based instant settlement, and native digital securities issuance. This article will not repeat those details but will instead attempt to answer two deeper questions: Why did the NYSE choose to launch at this moment? Where is the future of US stock tokenization headed?

1. "Why Now?"

To understand "why now," one must first understand the real constraints of the securities market. The reason traditional markets have long maintained fixed trading hours is not because the matching systems cannot operate continuously, but because clearing, settlement, and margin management are highly dependent on bank operating hours. Once the banking system closes, fund flows and risk control face a breakpoint, naturally limiting trading hours. The NYSE's proposal to cover non-operating hour funding gaps through on-chain settlement and tokenized funding instruments is essentially reshaping the market's temporal structure.

Backed by its parent company ICE, which is collaborating with BNY Mellon and Citibank to promote tokenized deposit arrangements, the NYSE enables clearing members to transfer funds and fulfill margin obligations during non-banking hours. This is a crucial step. The real systemic risk of 24-hour trading lies not in matching but in whether margin and liquidity can operate continuously. Only when "money" itself is tokenized does 7×24 trading become practically feasible.

So, why focus on time? In traditional finance, weekends, holidays, and late nights are liquidity gaps. Even with dark pool support, they cannot facilitate true price discovery due to time constraints and dispersed participants. Various US stock tokenization platforms also cannot truly achieve 7×24 operation.

But in 2026, this "financial vacuum" is being violently filled by tokenized contract markets. In today's capital markets, risk appetite is revealed in real-time, by the "minute." For example, the cumulative trading volume for contracts related to "US military strikes on Iran" on the world's largest decentralized prediction market, Polymarket, recently surged past $529 million. While ordinary investors were still repeatedly searching for terms like "Iran," "casualty numbers," and press releases, real money had already priced the risk through the prediction market's odds. Simultaneously, BTC, as a 24-hour liquid risk asset, also mirrors the pulse of geopolitics, changing almost every second.

This might be one reason the NYSE had to "flip the table." If US stocks continued with their 9-to-5 clearing system, they would completely lose the "primary pricing power" for global core assets.

However, viewing this solely as a post-trade upgrade underestimates its significance. When funds begin settling on-chain, the positioning of financial institutions will be redistributed. The traditional path involves banks holding funds to earn interest spreads, brokers earning transaction fees, and issuers telling stories to attract capital. Funds flow sequentially between different institutions, each with its own profit logic. When stablecoins become settlement and margin tools, and trading, clearing, and fund management can be completed on the same technological layer, the value chain originally dispersed across different institutions may be compressed into fewer nodes. On-chain platforms can not only earn transaction fees but may also participate in fund management and liquidity organization. Of course, this doesn't mean banks will disappear, but it does mean funds no longer must be held within the traditional banking system. To put it more intuitively: In the past, you had to deposit money into a bank, then transfer it to a brokerage account to trade. In the future, the path might become: wallet as account, settlement as completion. The shortening of the fund path is itself a structural shock.

This is precisely why the NYSE did not choose to build a new system outside the regulatory framework but deliberately embedded tokenization within the existing market structure. The platform emphasizes non-discriminatory access but is limited to qualified broker-dealers. Tokenization does not change the legal attributes of securities; holders still fully enjoy dividend and governance rights. The on-chain form of an asset does not alter its legal essence. This restraint is key: The NYSE is not building a "wild token market" but aims to incorporate the on-chain form into the core, most stringent logic of securities regulation. Truly enduring innovation is never the most radical but the form that best withstands the tests of compliance and infrastructure.

2. Where is the Future of US Stock Tokenization Headed?

Major Web3 exchanges possess inherently sensitive and rapidly responsive genes. While mainstream media was still trying to analyze where SpaceX's value lies, platforms like MEXC had already opened a Pre-IPO market for SpaceX. Other exchanges have taken similar actions; Robinhood even launched Robinhood Ventures, allowing everyone to invest in private equity funds focused on building future tech private companies. According to Kraken, its tokenized stock perpetual contracts (xStocks), launched last year, amassed a staggering $25 billion in trading volume in less than a year.

However, exchanges may not be the only future traffic gateways. As Binance, Bitget, OKX, and various Web3 wallets begin supporting the buying and selling of on-chain assets, wallets themselves have become the new generation of traffic gateways. Wallets are no longer just storage tools but interfaces aggregating trading, DeFi, staking, and investment. When assets can flow directly on-chain, the traditional path of "depositing into an exchange and then trading" is also being shortened. Whose money does DeFi earn? It earns the spreads and market-making profits from improved capital flow efficiency, a redistribution of the traditional intermediary structure. When the NYSE launches its tokenization platform, it is also responding to this reality: if mainstream exchanges do not proactively move into the on-chain form, on-chain liquidity will form self-sustaining cycles on other platforms.

Deeper competition and cooperation are also occurring between stablecoins and sovereign digital currencies. Having researched RWA for over a year, we have consistently believed that the most successful RWA currently is stablecoins, while the explosively growing RWA is listed company stocks. At some future point, true real-world asset RWA will become increasingly common. The US has clearly stated that the central bank will not directly issue stablecoins but will allow market participants to do so; China has made it clear that only the state can issue the digital yuan. Whether stablecoins can generate interest or possess attributes similar to bank deposits involves a struggle for monetary positioning. When stablecoins become settlement tools, they are not just payment mediums but closer to a "digitized form of fiat currency." If the NYSE platform uses stablecoins as its settlement foundation, it inevitably participates in this broader institutional competition.

3. Conclusion

If 2025 was the year of application and testing for US stock tokenization, then 2026 may become the year of institutional forking. As the post-trade system begins to loosen, as funds themselves become tokenized, and as wallets become new traffic gateways, the temporal and capital structures of the securities market are quietly being rewritten. This is not as simple as "putting stocks on-chain"; it is a hierarchical migration of market infrastructure. In this process, whoever can master the synergistic logic of trading, settlement, and funds simultaneously will be closer to the market form of the future.