Traditional finance and crypto are gradually converging, opening up a completely new era. Major financial corporations are racing to bring crypto products to customers, while crypto exchanges are competing to tokenize stocks and traditional assets. Just in the past few weeks, the pace of innovation has been staggering:
- Kraken has launched xStocks, turning US stocks into tradeable tokens on the Solana blockchain.
- Robinhood allows European users to buy US stocks in the form of tokens on Arbitrum (Ethereum's Layer 2) and is planning to build its own blockchain called Robinhood Chain.
- Gemini has implemented tokenized US stock trading in the European Union and is using the Arbitrum network.
- Coinbase has filed with the US SEC for approval to issue stocks on the blockchain, likely using the Base network (Ethereum's Layer 2).
The practical applications of blockchain and crypto are far exceeding the concept of "store of value" like Bitcoin. This is just the starting point. Tokenization will be the next wave: starting from bonds, then stocks, real estate, legal documents, and many other types of assets.
We often do not recognize a major transformation as it is happening, as we usually only look at a small part and do not see the big picture until we look back later. Additionally, on the path of development, many failed efforts only make our vision more obscure.
The internet originated from ARPANET in 1969, TCP/IP in 1983, and the World Wide Web in 1991. But it wasn't until around the year 2000 that email became an indispensable tool for businesses, and only then did it spread into personal life. At that time, people laughed at Bill Gates for listening to baseball over the network instead of turning on free radio or watching TV with images. They also mocked Netflix when it took hours just to download a blurry 30-minute video, not to mention streaming high-quality films.
