When Bitget’s Nvidia Starts Paying Dividends, the Stock Market Enters Its “Reality” Moment

Author: David, Chaoxiang Research

Tokenized US stocks have been one of the fastest-growing sectors in the crypto industry over the past two years, and also one of the most criticized.

What's the criticism? That it's an empty shell.

For example, you spend 100 USDT to buy a token called NVDA, thinking you own a small piece of Nvidia stock. In reality, you likely just get a shadow that tracks the price. There's no underlying real stock, no dividends, none of the rights a stock should have.

Yet this criticized sector has become the prevailing trend in the current version of the crypto industry.

And within it, one exchange has produced a set of numbers that are hard to ignore.

According to Bitget's Q1 2026 Transparency Report, the peak trading volume for non-crypto assets has reached 40% of the platform's total. Stocks, gold, forex—things that should appear in a brokerage app—a significant portion is now being traded on a crypto exchange.

TokenInsight's Q1 contracts market report provides another benchmark: Bitget's stock perpetual swaps rank second globally, with a market share of 22.61%.

Furthermore, among tokenized stocks issued by Ondo, Bitget alone accounts for approximately 89% of the trading volume. The cumulative trading volume of stock futures has exceeded $10 billion, and spot volume has surpassed $1 billion.

Now, look at the user side.

According to Bitget's User Asset Allocation Report released in May this year, 52% of users' portfolios already contain both cryptocurrencies and US stocks. Half of the users are no longer just buying coins; their accounts house assets from two worlds.

And these numbers were all zero a year ago.

The numbers are certainly impressive, and the demand is undeniably real. But from our perspective, a more pointed question lurks behind these figures:

What exactly are you buying when you purchase these on-chain US stocks? Are you spending real money only to get an elaborate price shadow?

Bitget took nine months to answer this question.

Stones from Other Mountains to Polish the US Stock Jade

In Q3 last year, Bitget started adding US stocks to its offerings, employing the strategy of borrowing strength from others.

Tokenized stocks issued by third parties like Ondo and xStocks were listed, with Bitget responsible for listing and trade matching. Concurrently, they launched the industry's first US stock index perpetual swap, offering up to 100x leverage and 24/7 trading.

This model ran for several months, reaching a contract volume of $10 billion by the end of December last year—a very significant scale. The demand was there; users indeed wanted to access US stocks on a crypto exchange. But the product itself had inherent issues.

Stones from other mountains can polish jade, but if the stone is too coarse, you cannot create a smooth experience. As volume grew, problems also surfaced.

For instance, you search for Nvidia, buy 100 USDT of the on-chain NVDA token, and the price does track the Nasdaq. Then what?

First, the experience: liquidity is DEX-level; slippage is noticeable even on moderately sized orders. Second, regarding shareholder rights: if Nvidia pays dividends each quarter, you receive nothing. When a stock split occurs, your position might not update for days.

For on-chain US stocks, essentially, you buy a price first, and get nothing else with it.

These three problems aren't exclusive to Bitget; they are common ailments across the entire tokenized US stock sector. Third-party issuers control the underlying assets and product logic. The exchange is merely a shelf for display; it has no control over liquidity, dividends, or asset usability.

The ceiling of the distribution model is the ceiling of someone else's product.

At this point, exchanges like Bitget faced two paths. One was to continue making patchwork fixes on someone else's infrastructure. The other was to build their own ship. It chose the heavier path.

Self-Forging: When Stocks on Bitget Start Paying Dividends

Recently, Nvidia announced raising its quarterly dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25, with the next payment date on June 26. If you hold rNVDA on Bitget, your account might see an additional cash dividend converted to USDT, and your cost basis will update automatically.

In the on-chain US stock track, this is likely the first instance of "true equity". This corresponding right exists because the underlying on-chain US stocks have undergone a new evolution on Bitget.

This June, Bitget launched a platform called Reality. The name literally translates to reality. In a crypto-US stock track rife with shadow stock assets, this name itself sounds like a manifesto:

When tokenized stocks become mainstream in the future, they will shed the "tokenized" prefix and become the default "stocks" people refer to. The stocks people trade today will instead be prefixed as "traditional stocks."

That might sound like science fiction, but Reality aims to make it real.

What the platform does is not overly complicated. Instead of sourcing from Ondo or xStocks, it issues its own tokenized US stocks through Reality. Reality handles the issuance, licensed broker Alpaca manages custody, and The Network Firm conducts independent audits. Each link has its distinct role.

The stock tokens issued by the platform are called rTokens. The US stock ticker you buy on Bitget now will be presented with an 'r' prefix.

What's the difference in experience between rTokens and the batch of third-party tokens from six months ago?

The most direct difference is you can finally know if there's something real behind it. In the 1.0 era of tokenized stocks, the underlying custody chain was essentially a black box for users. You didn't know if the NVDA you bought was backed by an actual Nvidia share.

Reality has made this chain transparent. The rToken tokenized US stocks have an underlying real-world asset mapping.

For instance, if you buy $100 of rNVDA on Bitget, Reality, through Alpaca, buys the corresponding amount of real Nvidia shares on the US stock market and deposits them into Alpaca's custody account. For every unit you buy, it buys one, a 1:1 correspondence.

Public information shows Alpaca is a US-licensed, self-clearing broker registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC).

SIPC is a federal-level investor insurance mechanism in the US, meaning even if the broker itself fails, the securities assets in the custody account have a safety net, up to $500,000. Alpaca is also one of the most widely used custody service providers in the tokenized securities field, serving clients including Binance, Ondo, and xStocks.

Independent audits are handled by The Network Firm, which produces CPA-level reports confirming a reserve ratio of 100% or more. Bitget has also created an on-chain proof-of-reserves dashboard that updates in real-time and is publicly viewable.

You own an asset, and you know it's real. That's the change perceived at the user level.

Following this perception deeper, you can see the design philosophy of the entire Reality architecture. Bitget deconstructed and rebuilt tokenized US stocks into three layers:

The first layer is securing the foundation. The aforementioned Alpaca custody, 1:1 purchasing, and on-chain proof-of-reserves address the fundamental trust issue: "Is there something real behind what I'm buying?"

The second layer is completing the rights. Stock dividends are credited to the account as a 1:1 token issuance; cash dividends are converted to USDT and deposited directly; stock splits and reverse splits are mirrored on-chain in real-time. In the past two years, if you bought tokenized Nvidia elsewhere, you watched actual shareholders receive dividends quarterly while your account remained static. This time, it's the rToken holders' turn.

The third layer is asset activation.

rTokens are integrated into Bitget's unified account system. Your rNVDA holdings can be used directly as margin. You can use a Nvidia position to open a BTC contract, leveraging a US stock to add leverage to a crypto contract. In brokerages, cross-asset margin is typically available only to institutions; it was unthinkable with previous on-chain stocks. Now, an ordinary user on Bitget can achieve a similar effect.

So, with this self-built infrastructure, what is the cost of buying stocks?

Based on publicly disclosed fee structures, for buying $1,000 worth of US stocks, Bitget charges approximately $0.4, while traditional online brokerages typically charge around $2.

Looking at these three layers together, the tokenized US stock category has undergone a qualitative change under Bitget's management: from a shadow token that merely tracks prices to a financial product with real custody, complete rights, and the ability to be mixed with crypto assets.

Two years ago, this was something brokers wouldn't do and exchanges couldn't do.

Some might ask, since the goal is US stocks, why not take a simpler route, like directly connecting to a broker's channel and building a front-end?

Bitget's choice is the opposite—it doesn't become an appendage to traditional finance but rather rebuilds this chain using crypto and on-chain methods. Reality has full-stack self-control from custody to distribution to on-chain mapping. rTokens are inherently on-chain assets; they can be deposited, withdrawn, and composed—things a direct broker connection solution cannot achieve.

Writing this, the author is reminded of a famous line from the Chinese drama "The Knockout": The bigger the waves, the more expensive the fish.

But to navigate the turbulent market environment to catch more fish, you need a reliable boat. Renting someone else's boat is an option, but with a boat you build yourself, you set your own waterline.

This is likely the ambition behind Bitget's Reality platform—not explicitly stated in various promotions, but clearly evident.

And apparently, Bitget doesn't intend to use this boat only for US stocks.

Beyond US Stocks: The Embryo of a Panoramic Exchange

The first batch of cargo loaded onto the new ship wasn't just stocks of listed companies.

In April this year, Bitget launched a product called IPO Prime, allowing ordinary users to subscribe to companies before they go public. The first offering was SpaceX, with a subscription price of $650 per unit and a total pool of approximately $61 million. The result? $177 million poured in, with 14,435 people competing.

The second offering was OpenAI, with a subscription price of $725 per unit and a pool of about $21 million. Actual subscriptions reached $120 million, with 5,448 participants, oversubscribed by nearly six times.

Combined, the two rounds saw close to $300 million in subscriptions and participation from nearly 20,000 people.

The common feature of these two companies is that in the world of traditional finance, ordinary people have no channel to gain equity exposure before their IPOs. Behind IPO Prime is an SPV structure partnered with Republic, tied to real equity.

Beyond Pre-IPO, Bitget also launched TradFi late last year, a CFD product denominated in USDT covering 79 instruments including forex, gold, commodities, and stock indices. Its daily trading volume peaked at over $8 billion.

Combined with Reality's continuously expanding range of US stock rTokens, the variety of assets accessible within a single Bitget account now far exceeds the traditional definition of a "crypto exchange."

Bitget has an internal name for this direction: UEX, or the Panoramic Exchange.

When CEO Gracy Chen first publicly mentioned this concept in September last year, the goal was straightforward: to cover crypto, US stocks, gold, ETFs, and forex through a single account, enabling one-stop trading of global high-quality assets.

To support this framework, the team is expanding.

Public information shows that over the past six months, Bitget has intensively recruited a group of hybrid talents with backgrounds in traditional finance and internet growth experience. New hires come from companies like Futu, LongBridge, Robinhood, and eToro, with cross-market experience covering the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and collaborations with traditional financial institutions like Nasdaq.

Judging by the direction of its hiring, this isn't a crypto exchange playing catch-up; it's more like a new species building its skeleton.

What the author finds interesting is Bitget's attitude towards this endeavor. There's a lighter path to offering US stock trading: connect to a broker's channel, put a front-end wrapper on it, and let users buy and sell.

Many platforms take this route. Bitget deliberately chose the heaviest one: building its own issuance platform, establishing its own custody chain, and making rTokens deposit-able, withdraw-able, and composable on-chain.

Why?

From a product choice perspective, Bitget's stance is clear. The broker direct-connection solution is essentially building a front-end for traditional finance. The stocks users buy live within the broker's system; they can't be deposited on a chain, withdrawn to a wallet, or used to leverage a BTC position.

The rTokens built by Reality are inherently on-chain assets, capable of much more than a broker channel. <