From dollar stablecoins to the tokenization of U.S. stocks, Crypto bless America may not be a joke.
Written by: Tyler
Have you ever traded U.S. stocks on-chain?
I woke up to see Kraken launch xStocks, initially supporting the trading of 60 U.S. stock tokens; Bybit followed closely with the launch of popular stock token pairs such as AAPL, TSLA, and NVDA; Robinhood also announced that it will support U.S. stock trading on the blockchain and plans to launch its own public chain.
Regardless of whether the tokenization wave is old wine in new bottles, U.S. stocks have indeed become the "new darling" on-chain overnight.
However, on closer inspection, this new narrative woven from dollar stablecoins, U.S. stock tokenization, and on-chain infrastructure seems to be plunging Crypto into financial narratives and geopolitical games, inevitably sliding into a new role definition.
The tokenization of U.S. stocks is nothing new.
The tokenization of U.S. stocks is actually not a new concept.
In the last cycle, representative projects such as Synthetix and Mirror have explored a complete set of on-chain synthetic asset mechanisms. This model not only allows users to mint and trade "U.S. stock tokens" such as TSLA and AAPL through over-collateralization (such as SNX and UST), but can even cover legal currency, indexes, gold, and crude oil, almost encompassing all tradable assets.
The reason is that the synthetic asset model tracks underlying assets and over-collateralizes to mint synthetic asset tokens: for example, if the collateralization rate is 500%, it means that users can pledge $500 of crypto assets (such as SNX, UST) into the system, and then mint synthetic assets (such as mTSLA, sAAPL) that are anchored to the asset price for trading.
Since the entire operating mechanism uses oracle quotations + on-chain contract matching, all transactions are completed by the internal logic of the protocol, and there is no real trading counterparty, which theoretically gives it a core advantage, that is, it can achieve an infinite depth, no-slippage liquidity experience.
So why did this synthetic asset model fail to achieve large-scale adoption?
In the final analysis, price anchoring ≠ asset ownership. The U.S. stocks minted and traded under the synthetic asset model do not represent real ownership of the stock in reality, but are just "betting" on the price. Once the oracle fails or the collateral assets explode (Mirror fell on the UST crash), the entire system will face the risk of liquidation imbalance, price decoupling, and collapse of user confidence.
At the same time, an easily overlooked long-term factor is that U.S. stock tokens under the synthetic asset model are destined to be a niche market in Crypto - funds only circulate within the on-chain closed loop, and no institutions or brokers participate. This means that it will always remain at the "shadow asset" level, unable to integrate into the traditional financial system and establish real asset access and capital channels. Few people are willing to launch derivative products based on this, making it difficult to leverage the structural inflow of incremental funds.
So, although they were once popular, they ultimately failed to become popular.
U.S. stock fund diversion structure under the new architecture
And this time, the tokenization of U.S. stocks has changed a set of gameplay.
Taking the U.S. stock token trading products launched by Kraken, Bybit, and Robinhood as examples, based on the disclosed information, it is not price anchoring or on-chain simulation, but real stock custody, and funds flow into U.S. stocks through brokers.
Objectively speaking, in this mode of U.S. stock tokenization, any user only needs to download a crypto wallet and hold stablecoins to easily buy U.S. stock assets on DEX at any time and anywhere, bypassing account opening thresholds and identity verification. There is no U.S. stock account, no time difference, and no identity restrictions in the entire process, directly guiding funds into U.S. stocks on-chain.
From a micro perspective, this means that global users can buy and sell U.S. stocks more freely, but from a macro perspective, this is actually the U.S. dollar and the U.S. capital market using Crypto as a low-cost, high-elasticity, 7×24 pipeline to attract incremental funds from around the world - after all, users can only go long under this structure, not short, and there is no leverage or non-linear return structure (at least as of now).
Imagine such a scenario: a non-Crypto user in Brazil or Argentina suddenly finds that they can buy U.S. stock tokens on-chain or on CEX. They only need to download a wallet/exchange, exchange local assets for USDC, and then click a few times to buy AAPL or NVDA.
To put it nicely, it simplifies the user experience, but in reality, it is a "low-risk, high-certainty" U.S. stock fund diversion structure built for global funds. The hot money of Crypto users all over the world can use Crypto to flow into the U.S. asset pool across borders with unprecedentedly low friction, allowing people all over the world to buy U.S. stocks anytime, anywhere.
Especially when more and more L2, exchanges, wallets and other native infrastructures connect to these "U.S. stock trading modules", the relationship between Crypto and the U.S. dollar and Nasdaq will become more secretive and more stable.
From this perspective, a series of "new/old" narratives surrounding Crypto are being designed as a distributed financial infrastructure, and specifically for American financial services:
U.S. Treasury Stablecoin → World Currency Liquidity Pool
U.S. Stock Tokenization → Nasdaq's Traffic Portal
On-Chain Trading Infrastructure → Global Transit Station for U.S. Capital Brokers
This may be a soft way to siphon global funds. Regardless of whether the conspiracy theory is strong, at least Trump or the new U.S. speaker after him may fall in love with this new narrative of "U.S. stock tokenization".
How should we view the pros and cons of "U.S. stock tokenization"?
If viewed purely from the perspective of the Crypto community, is the tokenization of U.S. stocks attractive, or what impact might it have on the on-chain cycle?
I think we need to look at it dialectically.
For users lacking access to U.S. stock investment, especially Crypto natives and retail investors in third-world countries, the tokenization of U.S. stocks equals opening up an unprecedented low-threshold channel, which can be described as "asset equalization" across barriers.
After all, as a super market that has successively emerged with star stocks such as Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia, the "historical long bull market" of U.S. stocks has always been praised by the investment community and is one of the most attractive asset classes in the world. However, for the vast majority of ordinary investors, the threshold for participating in trading and sharing dividends has always been relatively high: account opening, deposit and withdrawal, KYC, regulatory restrictions, trading time differences... various thresholds dissuade countless people.
Now, with just a wallet and a few stablecoins, even in Latin America, Southeast Asia, or Africa, you can buy Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla anytime, anywhere, realizing the universalization of dollar assets at the global user level. In short, for underdeveloped areas where local assets cannot outperform U.S. stocks or even inflation, the tokenization of U.S. stocks undoubtedly provides unprecedented accessibility.
Looking at the internal Crypto community, especially the trading-oriented users represented by the Chinese-speaking region, the overlap with the U.S. stock investment community is quite high. Most people already have U.S. stock accounts and can access the global financial system with one click through banks + overseas brokers such as Interactive Brokers (I personally use a combination of SafePal/Fiat24 + Interactive Brokers on a daily basis).
For these users, the tokenization of U.S. stocks seems half-baked - only able to go long, without derivative support, not even basic options or short selling, it is not trading-friendly.
As for whether the tokenization of U.S. stocks will further drain the crypto market, don't rush to deny it. I think this might be a window of opportunity for a new round of "asset Lego" after the clearing of inferior assets in the DeFi ecosystem.
After all, one of the biggest problems with on-chain DeFi currently is the serious lack of high-quality assets. In addition to BTC, ETH, and stablecoins, there are not many assets with real value consensus. A large number of altcoins are of questionable quality and highly volatile.
If these U.S. stock tokens, which are custody-held and issued on-chain, can gradually penetrate into DEX, lending protocols, and on-chain options and derivatives systems in the future, they can become new basic assets, supplement on-chain asset portfolios, and provide DeFi with more deterministic value raw materials and narrative space.
Moreover, the current U.S. stock tokenization products are essentially spot custody + price mapping, without leverage and non-linear return structures. They naturally lack deep financial tool support. It depends on who can be the first to make products with strong composability and good liquidity, and who can provide an integrated on-chain experience of "spot + short selling + leverage + hedging".
For example, as high-credit collateral in lending protocols, constructing new hedging targets in options protocols, and forming composable asset baskets in stablecoin protocols. From this perspective, whoever can be the first to create an integrated on-chain trading experience of spot + short selling + leverage + hedging is expected to create the next on-chain Robinhood or on-chain Interactive Brokers.
And for DeFi, this may be the real turning point.
It depends on who can benefit from the new narrative in terms of on-chain product dividends.
Written at the end
Starting in 2024, "Can Crypto still revolutionize TradFi?" is no longer a question worth discussing.
Especially this year, using stablecoins to penetrate the geographical restrictions of traditional financial pipelines, bypass sovereign barriers, tax obstacles, and identity verification, and finally use Crypto to establish a new type of dollar channel has become a core theme of many narratives led by compliant dollar stablecoins recently.
Crypto bless America, maybe it's not just a joke.
