Bitget Joins Coinbase and Kraken in the Race for Tokenized Stocks

Bitget has deepened its integration with Ondo Finance to offer over 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs

• Regulators in the U.S., EU, and UK are moving toward formal frameworks, but voting rights and offshore compliance remain unresolved

This includes Tesla, NVIDIA, Apple, and the broader “Magnificent Seven” – directly on its platform, as per an official announcement on their website. The move positions the exchange alongside a growing list of crypto platforms attempting to blur the line between digital assets and traditional equities.

By January 2026, Bitget reported that its tokenized stock spot volume crossed $1 billion, driven by a reported 4,900% spike in activity during the second half of 2025. Ondo-backed tokenized equities on the platform had captured roughly 89% of the on-chain equity market share by December 2025 – a figure that, if accurate, reflects just how early and underdeveloped this segment still is overall.

The product allows users to trade representations of stocks like SPY, QQQ, and precious metal ETFs around the clock, with settlement in USDT. Bitget has restructured its interface to include a dedicated “TradFi” tab alongside its standard crypto trading section – a deliberate signal about where the company sees its future.

Gracy Chen, Bitget’s CEO, put it plainly: “The future of exchanges will not be defined by whether they offer crypto or traditional assets, but by how effectively they integrate both.”

That thesis is being stress-tested across the industry right now.

Everyone Wants a Piece of It

Across the first quarter of 2026, nearly every major crypto exchange has announced or launched some version of tokenized equity trading.

Coinbase made the most direct move in February 2026, launching commission-free U.S. stock and ETF trading inside its “Coinbase Advanced” interface. The infrastructure runs through Coinbase Capital Markets, a FINRA-regulated entity, and allows users to fund positions with USDC or USD. CEO Brian Armstrong described the product as a stepping stone toward fully on-chain tokenized equities – a formulation that sounds more like a roadmap than a commitment, but the direction is clear. Coinbase is going after Robinhood’s user base directly.

In March 2026, ICE – parent company of the New York Stock Exchange – announced a $25 billion strategic investment in OKX. The partnership is structured around building a “unified matching engine” for both traditional and crypto assets, with NYSE-linked tokenized equities at the center. It is the first time a legacy exchange operator has taken an equity stake and board seat in a top-tier crypto platform for this purpose.

Kraken, through a partnership with Nasdaq launched in early 2026, introduced xStocks – a tokenization layer that allows institutional clients to move traditional securities onto blockchain networks. The focus is on 24/7 liquidity and international access, targeting markets where retail investors have historically had limited or no access to U.S. public equities.

Bybit has taken a somewhat different path, rebranding its 2026 direction around “Global Financial Infrastructure.” Its TradFi tab now supports over 200 instruments, and in February 2026 it launched MyBank, a retail banking layer designed to streamline fiat-to-crypto-to-equity flows.

The tokenized stock market cap – sitting at roughly $32 million at the start of 2025 – is estimated at close to $1 billion heading into 2026, a nearly 3,000% increase in under a year. Whether that reflects genuine adoption or concentrated activity on a handful of platforms is a question worth asking.

The Regulatory Picture Is Getting Clearer – But Not Clean

The acceleration in tokenized stock offerings has been aided, in part, by regulatory movement. In the United States, SEC Chair Paul Atkins has shifted the agency toward what’s being described as an “innovation-first” posture.

In January 2026, the SEC issued a formal taxonomy statement clarifying that tokenized securities are, unambiguously, securities. That sounds obvious, but the clarity matters – it ends years of ambiguity and forces platforms to comply with existing disclosure and investor protection standards rather than treating tokenization as a loophole. The SEC also issued a no-action letter permitting the Depository Trust Company to run a three-year pilot for tokenizing assets, a move that could eventually allow tokenized and traditional shares of the same company to trade on the same order book.

As of March 2026, the SEC is also considering a formal “Innovation Exemption” that would let crypto-native platforms facilitate tokenized trading during a transitional registration period – a structured on-ramp toward full compliance rather than an outright enforcement action.

In Europe, MiCA reached its final transition phase in early 2026, creating a single licensing passport across all 27 EU member states for firms dealing in tokenized assets. ESMA has also recommended making the DLT Pilot Regime permanent, which would allow exchanges to function simultaneously as trading venues and clearinghouses – a structural change that could significantly cut costs.

Adding further weight to Europe’s regulatory push, the European Central Bank’s Eurosystem recently unveiled Appia – a strategic initiative aimed at building an integrated tokenized wholesale financial market across the continent. According to the ECB, the project brings together central banks, financial institutions, technology providers, and policymakers, with one explicit condition: central bank money stays at the core of the system. It is less a product launch and more a structural signal — Brussels is not leaving the architecture of tokenized finance to the private sector alone.

The UK is moving on a slightly different timeline. The FCA has announced a licensing gateway for tokenization firms set to open in September 2026, and separately launched PISCES, a private stock market built specifically for tokenized pre-IPO company shares.

Despite this progress, two issues remain unresolved across all jurisdictions. The first is offshore compliance: regulators are increasingly targeting exchanges that offer tokenized U.S. stocks to retail investors in markets where they hold no local license. The second is more fundamental – tokenized stock holders in most current implementations receive economic exposure to a security’s price and dividends, but not legal voting rights. That gap between financial and legal ownership is still an open question, and one that regulators, platforms, and investors have not fully worked through.

The infrastructure is being built faster than the rules that govern it. That gap has closed significantly over the past year. Whether it closes entirely before the next wave of retail adoption arrives is what the next 12 months will determine.

The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. Coindoo.com does not endorse or recommend any specific investment strategy or cryptocurrency. Always conduct your own research and consult with a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

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