Now, you can bring stocks of major companies like Nvidia, Tesla, and Strategy into your Solana wallet thanks to a new feature called xStocks. This feature allows trading dozens of U.S. stocks as tokens on the Solana blockchain, with each token backed 1:1 by the actual stock held by a managed third party.

xStocks: Tokenized stocks on Solana

#xStocks , a product from the tokenization company Backed, has been launched on centralized exchanges like Kraken and Bybit in some regions this week, and has also launched directly on the Solana blockchain. This feature allows traders to access popular U.S. stocks like Meta, Netflix, Coinbase, McDonald's, and many other stocks right on-chain.

Eligible users can exchange cryptocurrencies or fiat for stocks on the aforementioned exchanges, or swap any Solana token for the xStock they want through decentralized protocols like Jupiter or Raydium.

What sets xStocks apart from previous tokenized stock implementations (which only reflect the price of an off-chain asset) is that each xStock token is backed 1:1 by the underlying asset held by a managed third party. This ensures that users buying an Apple stock as an xStock on-chain can be assured that their stock is held in custody and can be redeemed at any time.

Benefits of tokenized stocks

According to Backed, trading tokenized stocks like xStocks offers many benefits that users trading through traditional brokers do not have:

24/7 trading: Not limited by stock market opening hours.

Global access: Allows users in different geographic areas to access the U.S. stock market without going through brokers, reducing commission fees.

Used in DeFi: Helps stocks be usable in decentralized finance (DeFi).

Other platforms are also getting involved

While Kraken and Bybit have partnered with Backed and their xStocks product, other platforms are also looking to build their own tokenization product suite. Coinbase is seeking approval from the U.S. SEC to offer tokenized stocks on its platform. Additionally, Robinhood announced on Monday that it is rolling out tokenized stock trading for European users, allowing them to trade U.S.-listed stocks through the Arbitrum network (Ethereum's layer-2). Robinhood also plans to launch its own dedicated layer-2 blockchain and migrate services to that chain. #anhbacong