Original Author: Zhou Zhou, Foresight News
The wave of "selling US stocks" has swept across the entire cryptocurrency industry.
According to my incomplete statistics, more than 30 cryptocurrency trading platforms have started to "sell US stocks," with over 10 platforms having more than 10 million users. For example, Bybit (70 million users), Gate (30 million users), Kraken (15 million users), OKX Wallet (55 million users), Phantom (15 million users), Robinhood (27 million users), and Moonshot (20 million users). Bitget and Trust Wallet have even surpassed 100 million users.
The CEO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, also stated that they will launch a "mixed product of cryptocurrency and US tech stocks" on September 22.
In just three months, the business of "selling US stocks" has become a standard feature for almost all mainstream CEX and DEX. Cryptocurrency exchanges have begun to experiment with "selling tokenized US stocks."
On September 3, 2025, Ondo Global Markets officially launched, marking the entry of Ondo, the world's largest RWA platform, into the tokenized US stock market. The release of this product has also been highly anticipated by industry practitioners.
According to my statistics, there are currently over 8 "cryptocurrency trading platforms" in the Ondo ecosystem, including Bitget Wallet, Trust Wallet, Gate, Bitget, MEXC, LBank, etc.; in the xStocks ecosystem, there are over 10 "cryptocurrency trading platforms," including Kraken, Bybit, Bitmart, Moonshot, Phantom, Particle, UXUY, Kamino, etc.
Without exception, users can purchase "tokenized US stocks" on these platforms using stablecoins.
According to the latest data from Dune, the stock tokenization platform xStocks has officially been in operation for three months, with a total trading volume reaching $3.782 billion, of which CEX trading volume is $3.612 billion and DEX trading volume is $170 million. Ondo Global Markets, which just launched two days ago, has reached a trading volume of $65 million, with 253 independent holders.
In addition to xStocks and Ondo, there are more stock tokenization platforms actively entering the market, such as Multiply, MyStonks, StableStock, etc. Some even offer more diverse services, such as stock trading services for non-listed companies like SpaceX and OpenAI, as well as contracts and derivatives services for tokenized stocks.
Disrupting Traditional Brokerages? Who Will Be the Next Robinhood?
Although the US stock market is the largest capital market in the world, the actual participants number less than 180 million. This means that over 5 billion internet users globally have never engaged in US stock trading.
The last to target the US stock business and successfully achieve significant results were Robinhood and Futu. They successfully disrupted the traditional brokerage model through the popularization of internet technology, allowing more people to access US stock trading.
For example, Futu, the largest US stock brokerage in China, was founded in 2011. It leveraged the "tailwind" of the internet to allow users to open accounts online directly, overturning the convention that ordinary users could only trade A-shares with traditional Chinese brokerages, enabling many ordinary Chinese users to purchase US stocks across borders. By 2025, Futu's registered users for US stocks had exceeded 26 million, with a market value of approximately $26 billion. However, at the end of 2022, during Futu's rapid growth phase, China promptly prohibited its mainland new users from trading US and Hong Kong stocks, causing its user growth to slow down and shifting its focus to overseas global markets.
Robinhood, the largest internet brokerage in the US and the home base for retail investors in US stocks, was founded in 2013. It directly matches orders via the internet and introduced commission-free trading for US stocks, disrupting the fee structure of the US brokerage industry. It currently has over 23 million users and a market value close to $100 billion.
The rise of Robinhood and internet brokerages like Futu is inseparable from the rise of the internet wave. With the development of stablecoins and cryptocurrency technology, "crypto brokerages" have also begun to challenge this market.
Among them, xStocks and Ondo are the frontrunners. Particularly, Ondo, as the largest RWA platform globally, has strong financial backing and solid relationships, having obtained the three major compliance licenses in the US, which makes it highly noteworthy.
"Unlike traditional brokerage platforms, there is no need for KYC, which is one of the reasons we are collaborating with Ondo," said Hayley, a practitioner from a cryptocurrency trading platform collaborating with Ondo.
The biggest difference between platforms providing US stock trading services like Ondo and brokerages like Robinhood and Futu is that Ondo does not require KYC, meaning users can trade US stocks without any identification verification. Industry insiders point out that this breakthrough, along with new gameplay derived from tokenized US stocks, may attract tens of millions of new users into the US stock market.
I have personally experienced the "tokenized stock feature" using Bitget Wallet and Trust Wallet in the Ondo ecosystem and successfully purchased tokenized US stocks like Apple and Tesla.
The Birth of a New Species: "Crypto Brokerages"
Before the emergence of internet brokerages, traditional brokerages operated in a completely different manner.
The traditional brokerage model centered around offline branches and offices. Investors wanting to open an account needed to bring identification documents like ID cards and household registration books to the counter. Buying and selling stocks required either calling a broker or going to the office to place an order, usually incurring a transaction fee of 1% or more.
The emergence of internet brokerages changed this. People no longer needed to open accounts offline or call to trade stocks, and even transaction fees could be waived, just like Robinhood's commission-free trading for US stocks, which disrupted the traditional fee structure of US brokerages.
Today, all brokerages have effectively become "internet brokerages."
Crypto brokerages represent another new species. They aim to go further than internet brokerages.
First, crypto brokerages want to allow all users globally to buy US stocks without identity verification. While internet brokerages have significantly lowered the barriers to account opening, they still require identification documents. In contrast, "crypto brokerages" allow users to buy and sell US stocks without KYC or any identification verification.
Second, tokenized stocks can circulate across different platforms. Due to the nature of blockchain, ordinary users can directly transfer tokenized stocks from one platform to another. This is currently not possible with traditional brokerages. You cannot directly transfer your Apple stocks from Futu to another friend or to the Robinhood platform. However, this must be realized on crypto brokerage platforms.
Third, crypto brokerage platforms can facilitate more transactions that are currently not possible on traditional brokerage platforms. For example, users can purchase stocks of non-listed companies and engage in stock derivatives trading to meet more user needs.
Just as Robinhood and Futu solved different problems to achieve user growth in the millions, crypto brokerages face the same challenge. Whether they can become the next Robinhood depends on whether they can solve new problems through stablecoins and cryptocurrency technology, allowing more people who have not had access to US stocks to trade them.
As for whether tokenized US stocks are considered US stocks, this question may become as irrelevant as whether dollar-pegged stablecoins are considered dollars.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
