From MyStonks to Backed, why is U.S. stock tokenization 'urgent'?
U.S. stock tokenization is unexpectedly becoming the focus of the global blockchain market in 2025. According to data from RWA.xyz, the current market value of tokenized stocks is $422 million, with 50,000 addresses holding tokenized stocks, an increase of nearly 2000% compared to 30 days ago.
If you have recently paid attention to platforms like MyStonks, Backed, and Kraken, or even on Web3 exchanges like Gate.io and Bybit, you may have already noticed that traditional stock stars like Apple, Tesla, and NVIDIA have been rapidly brought on-chain, no longer confined to the trading windows of Wall Street, but circulating among global investors 24/7.
This wave of 'urgently' tokenizing is not just a technological breakthrough but an inevitable result of market demand and regulatory loosening, accelerating the change in the global investment landscape.
1. The sudden acceleration in 2025: Why is U.S. stock migrating on-chain?
The concept of blockchain has not been combined with traditional finance for the first time, but why is U.S. stock tokenization expected to explode in 2025? Technological advancements, market demand, regulatory easing, and capital logic together constitute the underlying driving forces of this trend.
First, the technical bottlenecks have been gradually broken. After years of development, mainstream public chains like Ethereum and Solana now possess the ability to support large-scale asset tokenization. Ethereum provides the ERC-20 standard to ensure on-chain compatibility, while Solana has become a popular choice for trading platforms like Kraken and Bybit due to its high throughput and low costs. Meanwhile, the gradual maturity of cross-chain bridges (like Wormhole) and decentralized identity verification (DID) mechanisms has lowered the barriers for traditional assets to enter the blockchain.
More importantly, in 2025, there is an unprecedented enthusiasm among global investors, especially in emerging economies, for investing in U.S. stocks. However, traditional trading channels for U.S. stocks have extremely high entry barriers for overseas investors: complicated account opening procedures, high transaction fees, and restricted trading hours significantly suppress overseas capital inflow. On-chain U.S. stocks completely bypass traditional account opening and trading processes, allowing global users to easily participate in U.S. asset investments directly using stablecoins. This 24/7, low-barrier, low-cost investment channel quickly satisfies the long-standing global market demand.
The deeper driving force comes from the global layout strategy of the dollar. The stablecoin market has created a trading volume of $27.6 trillion in 2024, even surpassing Visa and Mastercard. U.S. stock tokenization is providing a new value flow path for dollar stablecoins, becoming another secret channel for the global return of American capital. The on-chainization of U.S. stocks, while seemingly a financial innovation, is actually deeply tied to the internationalization strategy of the dollar. Using stablecoins and on-chain U.S. stocks as tools, American financial and regulatory institutions are attracting global capital to gather towards dollar assets in a more flexible way.
Image source: Internet Finance Research Institute of Zhongguancun
From technical feasibility to global capital flow, and to the strategic dominance of U.S. financial hegemony, the acceleration of U.S. stock tokenization is not a coincidence but rather a financial ecological reconstruction that has been carefully planned for a long time. The 'Apple' and 'Tesla' on-chain are not merely digital copies of traditional stocks, but structural changes to the global capital game rules.
However, the explosion of on-chain U.S. stocks is just the surface. Behind this 'urgency' for tokenization, the real players are the strategic games of exchanges and tokenization platforms.
2. The real driving forces behind the rise of on-chain U.S. stocks: the exchanges and platforms' genuine motivations.
The rapid development of on-chain U.S. stocks is not an active choice of the U.S. stock market itself, but rather a result of strategic promotion by on-chain asset platforms and exchanges. From MyStonks to Backed to Kraken, the rise of these platforms highlights the different demands and games among various market participants.
For professional asset tokenization platforms (like Backed and MyStonks), on-chain U.S. stocks mean new business models and regulatory arbitrage opportunities. For example, Backed, by partnering with Interactive Brokers and the European custodian Clearstream, can bypass the ambiguous regulatory zone of the SEC, and comply with regulations by holding actual U.S. stock assets in tokenized form in Europe, conducting global sales through on-chain platforms. This model not only reduces regulatory compliance costs but also opens up more flexible investment channels for global users.
MyStonks has chosen a more decentralized path, developing an on-chain asset model based on ERC-20 and NFT standards, combined with Fidelity's asset custody, emphasizing DID identity verification and transparency, and attempting to build a brand new bridge between decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional securities markets.
The participation of trading platforms like Kraken is more like capturing the next narrative trend: by introducing U.S. stock tokens to expand trading categories, enhance user stickiness, and reduce the risk of user assets flowing to traditional financial institutions. This participation strategy is not only a natural extension of business expansion but also reflects the high expectations of on-chain exchanges for the 'real asset's entry into Web3.'
The combined effect of these multiple driving forces has ultimately formed an accelerated race for 'on-chain U.S. stocks.' The cooperation and competition between exchanges and asset tokenization platforms have jointly shaped the phenomenon of U.S. stock tokenization in 2025 and laid the groundwork for the evolution of the U.S. stock tokenization ecosystem.
3. Explorers of different paths trying to answer how U.S. stocks should be tokenized on-chain.
MyStonks' approach is the most 'native.' It turns stocks into NFTs and ERC-20 tokens, circulating on-chain via the Ethereum network. It also integrates the DID identity system, attempting to meet compliance requirements while protecting privacy. On MyStonks, users can not only trade stock tokens but also 'own' them, like a USDC in their wallet. However, this model also introduces an old problem: the liquidity and composability of NFTs remain limited, and the efficiency of on-chain trading and user experience are still in their early stages.
Backed takes a completely different approach. It is more like an extension of a compliant financial institution, holding real U.S. stocks in a regulated European securities system and then issuing 1:1 pegged tokens. These tokens can be traded on-chain, but the core assets belong more to the platform than to the users. The value of Backed lies in lowering the entry barriers for traditional institutions to participate in Web3, but under this model, users' control over their assets remains limited and it is difficult to avoid the inherent issue of 'trusting intermediaries.'
Kraken positions itself as an 'interface platform,' not having its own token model, but directly integrating existing token products like Backed, providing traditional users with a familiar interface and convenient trading experience while maintaining basic compatibility with on-chain assets. Although this approach lowers the entry barriers for users, it also means its on-chain attributes are weaker, relying more on the platform's own credibility.
The three models emphasize different aspects: MyStonks emphasizes 'asset ownership by users,' Backed emphasizes 'asset authenticity,' and Kraken emphasizes 'transaction convenience.' They represent three paths, all answering a common question: Can the core assets of traditional finance also have their own 'universal expression' on-chain like USDT?
Behind this is not a technical route dispute, but rather a design question of 'who to trust': do users trust code? Trust the platform? Or trust the brokers and custodians behind them? These three are participating in an experiment towards future standards with different answers.
4. Trend significance and impact: What financial patterns are being reshaped by on-chain U.S. stocks?
On-chain U.S. stocks are changing not only the trading methods.
The most intuitive change is that stocks, which could only be traded during U.S. market hours, have become assets that can be bought and sold 24/7. Whether it is early morning in New York or late at night in East Asia, users can place orders, match, and execute trades. U.S. stocks no longer belong only to 'American daytime,' but have become global assets that operate around the clock.
The bigger change is that it allows ordinary global users to 'directly buy U.S. stocks' for the first time. In the past, to invest in stocks like Tesla and Apple, one had to open a U.S. stock account, exchange currencies, and pass compliance thresholds, but now, as long as one has stablecoins, everything can be done in one go. Cross-border investment has turned from a complex process into a simple wallet operation.
For DeFi, on-chain U.S. stocks bring not just a new asset class, but also the first genuine entry of real financial assets into the blockchain. These tokens have real enterprise support and cash flow, can directly participate in liquidity pools, lending, and even derivative design, thus providing DeFi with a credit foundation linked to real assets.
Image source: The tokenization of U.S. stock issuance and trading processes advocated by Project Open.
These assets entering DeFi are no longer abstract 'digital currencies,' but operational financial tools with stable valuation anchors and regulatory backing. They can be combined, pledged, split, and repackaged, gradually building a more mature on-chain financial ecosystem.
So when we ask 'Why is there a rush for U.S. stock tokenization,' what we may see is a wave or a craze. But looking deeper, it is about the re-dominance of dollar assets over global liquidity, the proactive convergence of crypto platforms towards the existing credit system, and yet another milestone in breaking the dimensional wall by blockchain.
Conclusion
From MyStonks to Backed to Kraken, they seem to be three different product solutions, but they actually reflect the strong desire of blockchain for real assets. Over the past few years, we have witnessed how stablecoins have become a new vehicle for the dollar. Now, U.S. stock tokenization is also walking the same path—not to replicate traditional finance, but to introduce a more trustworthy, familiar, and liquid asset anchor for the on-chain market.
Thus, we say that the reason U.S. stock tokenization is so 'urgent' is not that the U.S. stock market is anxious, but that the on-chain market desperately needs a more stable, genuine, and easily understood physical asset.
This wave of tokenization appears to be the 'tokenization of traditional assets,' but it is actually Web3 actively searching for an asset logic that can support trading, liquidity, and user trust. Especially in the current context where native crypto assets are highly volatile and DeFi TVL growth is slowing, U.S. stocks, as 'high-quality assets in the real world,' are rapidly being introduced into the Web3 ecosystem, becoming the traffic tool that exchanges compete for and the starting point for a new narrative.
From 24/7 uninterrupted trading to bypassing brokers for cross-border investments, to using stablecoins as settlement channels, the changes brought by U.S. stock tokenization have already surpassed the product itself.
