Web3 Lawyer Analysis: Where is the Future of Tokenization in US Stocks?

Author: Crypto Salad

SpaceX's powerful narrative is evident to anyone even slightly familiar with Musk's Starlink and Mars colonization stories. Many friends who previously paid no attention to the US stock market have also messaged CryptoSalty, wanting to know how to enter the US stock market. For Chinese residents, direct entry is a hurdle. Therefore, many have rekindled their enthusiasm for "US stock tokenization." CryptoSalty will not offer any investment advice or recommendations here. As always, I will thoroughly analyze the underlying logic of US stock tokenization; the rest is up to you to decide.

In the previous article , "Global Listing, 24-Hour Stock Trading? Analyzing the NYSE's On-Chain 'Strategy'," we dissected in detail what kind of tokenized US stock platform the NYSE wanted to achieve and analyzed its underlying logic. If the past year had seen US stock tokenization limited to Web3 exploration and experimentation, then the official launch of tokenized stocks by Nasdaq and the NYSE in 2026 completely ended this self-congratulatory hype within the industry. The Berlin Wall between US stocks and crypto assets has, in fact, collapsed.

We've previously broken down the technical elements of the NYSE platform, including 24/7 trading, fractional share pricing, instant settlement based on stablecoins, and native digital securities issuance. This article won't repeat those details, but instead attempts to answer two deeper questions: Why did the NYSE choose this time to launch? And what does the future hold for tokenization in the US stock market?

1. "Why now?"

To understand "why now," we must first understand the true constraints of the securities market. The reason traditional markets have maintained fixed trading hours for so long is not because the matching system cannot operate continuously, but because clearing, settlement, and margin management are highly dependent on bank operating hours. Once the banking system closes, there is a break in capital flow and risk control, naturally limiting trading hours. The NYSE's proposal to cover the funding gap outside of operating hours through on-chain settlement and tokenized funding instruments is, in effect, reshaping the market's time structure.

Backed by its parent company ICE, the NYSE is collaborating with BNY Mellon and Citigroup to promote tokenized deposit arrangements, enabling clearing members to allocate funds and fulfill margin obligations outside of banking hours. This is a crucial step, as the real systemic risk of 24-hour trading lies not in matching transactions, but in the sustainability of margin and liquidity. Only when the "money" itself is tokenized does 24/7 trading become truly feasible.

So why focus on timing? In traditional finance, weekends, holidays, and late nights represent liquidity gaps. Even with grey market trading, time constraints and dispersed participants prevent true price discovery. Similarly, various US stock tokenization platforms cannot truly operate 24/7.

But in 2026, this "financial vacuum" is being violently filled by the tokenized contract market. In today's capital markets, risk appetite is revealed in real time, down to the minute. For example, the cumulative trading volume of a series of contracts on Polymarket, the world's largest decentralized prediction market, regarding a "US strike on Iran" recently exceeded $529 million. While ordinary investors are still repeatedly checking "Iran," "casualties," and press releases in the search box, real money has already been priced into risk through the odds of the prediction market. At the same time, BTC, as a 24-hour liquid risk asset, also reflects the pulse of geopolitics, changing almost every second.

This may be one of the reasons why the NYSE had to "flip the table." If the US stock market continues to maintain its 9-to-5 clearing system, it will completely lose its "initial pricing power" over core global assets.

However, viewing this merely as a post-transaction upgrade underestimates its significance. When funds begin to settle on-chain, the ecosystem of financial institutions will be redistributed. The traditional path involves banks holding funds and earning interest rate spreads, brokerages earning transaction fees, and issuers attracting capital through storytelling. Funds flow sequentially between different institutions, each with its own profit logic. But when stablecoins become settlement and margin tools, allowing trading, clearing, and fund management to be completed on the same technological layer, the previously fragmented value chain across different institutions may be compressed to 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 necessarily have to be held within the traditional banking system. To put it more simply: in the past, you had to deposit money into a bank and then transfer it to a brokerage account to complete a transaction; in the future, the wallet may become the account, and settlement is complete. This shortening of the fund path is itself a structural shock.

This is precisely why the NYSE did not choose to break away from the regulatory system and start from scratch, but deliberately embedded tokenization into its existing market structure. The platform emphasizes non-discriminatory access, but only to qualified broker-dealers. Tokenization does not change the legal nature of securities; holders still fully enjoy dividend rights and governance rights. The on-chain form of assets does not change their legal essence. This restraint is key: the NYSE is not trying to create a "wild token market," but rather to incorporate on-chain forms into the core and most rigorous securities regulatory logic. Truly sustainable innovation is never the most radical, but rather the form that best withstands compliance and infrastructure scrutiny.

II. Where does the future of tokenization in the US stock market lie?

Major Web3 exchanges possess an inherent sensitivity and responsiveness. While mainstream media were still analyzing the value of SpaceX, exchanges like MSX had already opened a pre-IPO market for the company. Other exchanges followed suit; Robinhood even launched Robinhood Ventures, allowing everyone to participate in investing in private equity funds focused on building future technologies in private companies. According to Kraken, its tokenized perpetual stock contracts (xStocks), launched last year, garnered a staggering $25 billion in trading volume in less than a year.

However, exchanges may not be the only traffic entry point in the future. With Binance, Bitget, OKX, and various Web3 wallets supporting the buying and selling of on-chain assets, wallets themselves have become a new generation of traffic entry points. Wallets are no longer just storage tools, but interfaces that aggregate trading, DeFi, staking, and investment. When assets can flow directly on-chain, the traditional path of "depositing into an exchange and then trading" is being shortened. Whose money does DeFi ultimately earn? It earns from the price difference and market-making revenue brought about by the efficiency of capital flow, which is a redistribution of the traditional intermediary structure. When the NYSE launched its tokenization platform, it was actually responding to this reality: if mainstream exchanges do not actively move towards on-chain forms, on-chain liquidity will form a self-circulating cycle on other platforms.

A deeper level of competition and cooperation exists between stablecoins and sovereign digital currencies. Having studied RWAs for over a year, we've consistently maintained that stablecoins are currently the most successful RWAs, while publicly traded stocks are experiencing explosive growth. At some point in the future, truly real-world asset RWAs will become increasingly prevalent. The US has explicitly stated that it will not allow its central bank to directly issue stablecoins, but rather permits market participants to participate; China has clearly stated that only the state can issue the digital yuan. Whether stablecoins can generate interest and whether they possess attributes similar to bank deposits reflects a competition for a monetary niche. When stablecoins become settlement tools, they are not merely payment mediums, but closer to a "digital form of fiat currency." If the NYSE platform uses stablecoins as its settlement basis, it will inevitably participate in this broader institutional competition.

III. Conclusion

If 2025 was the year of applications and trials for tokenization in the US stock market, then 2026 may be the year of institutional forks. As trading systems begin to loosen, as funds themselves become tokenized, and as wallets become new entry points, the time and capital structures of the securities market are quietly being rewritten. This is not as simple as "putting stocks on the blockchain," but rather a hierarchical migration of market infrastructure. In this process, whoever can simultaneously master the synergistic logic of trading, settlement, and capital will be closer to the future market form.