On January 23, 2026, Beijing time, it was reported that Binance is exploring the restart of its stock token trading service, a product line that was discontinued in 2021. Now, it is back on the table, coinciding with the SEC's withdrawal of the lawsuit against Gemini and the intense negotiations in the U.S. Congress regarding market structure legislation and digital assets. The tug-of-war between traditional financial regulation and crypto innovation has not disappeared; it has simply entered a more complex phase of exploration and compromise. A core question arises around Binance's recent move: is this a cautious foray into a marginally relaxed regulatory environment, or a bold gamble on the narrative of "bringing traditional assets on-chain" in a context of high legislative and enforcement uncertainty? Regardless of where the answer points, it could rewrite the business boundaries of exchanges, reshape the compliance cost curve, and change the pathways and thresholds for ordinary users to access global stock market exposure.
From 2021's Shutdown to 2026's Re-exploration
● Timeline of business withdrawal: Binance's stock token service was shut down in 2021, when compliance pressures from jurisdictions like Europe suddenly escalated, and regulators became significantly more sensitive to "on-chain trading of quasi-securities products." Although specific documents and provisions have not been fully disclosed, it is clear that concerns regarding licensing requirements, investor protection, and information disclosure quickly pushed this innovative product back into a gray area, forcing Binance to hit the pause button.
● Dual attributes of product form: The so-called stock tokens essentially map the price and rights of traditional stocks onto on-chain tokens, allowing users to participate in fractional shares and track the underlying asset prices in real-time. On one hand, it provides users with exposure to stock-like prices; on the other hand, it possesses the high liquidity and convenient transfer attributes of on-chain assets. In design, these products attempt to combine the price discovery mechanism of the stock market with the 24-hour trading and global accessibility features of on-chain assets.
● Motivations for the current return: After several years of silence, Binance's choice to explore a restart in 2026 is closely tied to two macro backgrounds: first, the global regulatory framework surrounding digital assets has become more defined compared to 2021, with regulators shifting from a purely high-pressure approach to "layered and categorized management"; second, there is a rising demand from users for traditional assets on-chain, with the market seeking vehicles that can combine familiar assets with new infrastructure. Stock tokens sit at the intersection of this demand and regulation.
● Information gap and expectation management: Currently, public information is limited to "exploring a restart," without providing any clear timeline or list of initial open markets. In the absence of a specific roadmap, overly pricing this product line's revenue potential or its impact on Binance's valuation carries significant risks. For investors, a more pragmatic approach is to view this as a directional signal rather than a short-term performance catalyst.
Strategic Window Under Alternating Regulatory Tightness
● The rise and fall of the Gemini case: Since 2023, the SEC has sued Gemini and Genesis Global Capital's Earn product, viewing it as a typical case of unregistered securities issuance and sales, triggering widespread self-examination of yield products within the industry. Subsequently, there has been a long tug-of-war between regulators and platforms, until recently when the SEC withdrew its lawsuit against Gemini. This reversal indicates that U.S. regulation has some flexibility and trial-and-error space in its enforcement path, not a linear tightening, but rather an exploration of boundaries that can be accepted by both the judiciary and the market.
● The shadow of legislative uncertainty: Some analysts believe that "U.S. crypto market structure legislation may delay product launches," a viewpoint that still requires further validation but reflects a genuine concern—before a legislative framework is established, any innovative product close to securities attributes may be subject to a "pause button." When evaluating new products, platforms must not only consider current enforcement tendencies but also anticipate how upcoming regulations will rewrite the rules of the game.
● Potential reshaping power of the market structure bill: The U.S. Congress is debating a market structure bill that includes a "Digital Asset Ethics Act" amendment. If passed, the positioning of digital assets on exchanges, information disclosure obligations, and compliance thresholds for quasi-securities products may be systematically reshaped. For exchanges planning to offer stock tokens and similar products, this means they may need to operate under multiple frameworks of securities law, commodity law, and specific digital asset provisions, with the design space for business being redrawn by legal texts.
● Discrepancy between case settlements and legislative regulation: On one hand, the SEC has shown flexibility in cases like Gemini with withdrawals and settlements; on the other hand, Congress continues to push forward with the market structure bill, tightening the overall regulatory tone. This parallel state of "case flexibility, framework rigidity" presents a unique risk-reward ratio for actions like Binance's exploration of stock tokens: it may be able to test the waters in the short term by leveraging enforcement flexibility, but in the long term, it must face stricter legislative red lines.
Innovative Intersections of Traditional Finance and On-chain Assets
● Sense of mission under official narrative: In an interview with The Information, a Binance spokesperson emphasized that "exploring the provision of stock tokens is part of the mission to more closely integrate traditional finance with cryptocurrency." This definition elevates stock tokens from mere product innovation to a component of the platform's long-term strategy—it is not an isolated speculative tool but is packaged as a "bridge interface" connecting two financial systems.
● Reverse sample heading to Wall Street: In contrast to Binance's path of bringing traditional assets on-chain, CertiK's exploration of IPOs represents another direction—bringing on-chain security and auditing services to traditional capital markets. One path brings old-world assets onto new tracks, while the other allows new-world companies to undergo old-rule scrutiny. Together, these paths depict a trend: traditional finance and the crypto industry are no longer clearly delineated but are achieving two-way integration through different interfaces.
● User experience and licensing pressure: From the user's perspective, stock tokens can provide advantages such as fragmented holdings, 24-hour trading, on-chain settlement, and rapid cross-border transfers, making the traditionally high-threshold and time-restricted stock market more "internet-like." However, from a regulatory perspective, these products inevitably carry securities attributes, touching on sensitive issues such as issuance and trading licenses, custody arrangements, and cross-border sales. Platforms must repeatedly weigh the balance between enhancing accessibility and meeting compliance requirements in their designs.
● Multiple gray areas of legal characterization: Stock tokens serve both clearly regulated assets like traditional stocks and operate on decentralized crypto infrastructure, leading to their legal characterization easily falling into gray areas. On one hand, they may be viewed as variants of derivatives or depositary receipts; on the other hand, regulators may directly see them as unregistered securities issuances. This multiplicity of potential characterizations means that any design choice may simultaneously touch upon regulatory red lines in multiple countries.
Amplifying Effects of Emotion and Narrative
● Narrative competition among leading platforms: In addition to the exploration of stock tokens as "mapping traditional assets," Coinbase announced it will include the BIRB token related to Moonbirds in its listing roadmap, showcasing another narrative path—competing around new on-chain rights and community assets. Whether stock tokens or NFT ecosystem-derived tokens, leading platforms are vying for the narrative power and entry points of "the next story."
● Amplification of price signals: Research briefs indicate that the floor price of Moonbirds NFTs rose by about 10% to 2.48 ETH under the stimulus of the BIRB token TGE news, a notable increase in the existing NFT market. Although there is a lack of clear cash flow models supporting this, a single piece of news can drive double-digit increases, indicating that the market remains highly sensitive to the narrative of "new on-chain rights" and "potential token capture value."
● Resurgence of assets that can map real-world value: Bringing the focus back to Binance's exploration of restarting stock tokens, a preference is emerging: investors tend to favor tokenized assets that can map real-world value or rights, whether stock returns, protocol revenues, or NFT ecosystem rights. The stock tokens' main selling point is the combination of "real stock prices + convenient on-chain trading," which naturally aligns with this preference shift.
● Emotional premium and sustainability gap: However, whether it is the rise of BIRB-related NFTs or the imaginative space brought by stock token expectations, their short-term price reactions reflect more of an emotional and expectation premium rather than a sustainable cash flow model that has already materialized. Simplistically comparing such cases to replicable business templates may overlook the real constraints of regulatory uncertainty, user education costs, and long-term compliance expenditures.
Binance's Boundary Exploration and Compliance Game
● Commercial appeal of intermediate-layer products: From the perspective of exchange business, stock tokens belong to intermediate-layer products that span the crypto and traditional securities markets, inherently possessing the potential to attract new users and increase trading volume. For exchanges that have already penetrated deeply into the existing user base in the crypto space, opening a new category centered on traditional assets is expected to bring in cross-sector users and additional fee income, reinforcing their image as a "one-stop trading platform for global assets."
● Strategy behind the "exploration" statement: Before announcing a clear restart timeline and product details, Binance has chosen to release the signal of "exploring a restart," effectively casting a test balloon between regulation and the market. This allows for observing regulatory responses from various jurisdictions and gauging user and institutional interest in stock tokens, thereby providing reference data for whether to increase investment and how to design compliance structures in the future.
● Real constraints of pending cases: Regarding any pending litigation between Binance and the SEC, it is currently impossible and inappropriate to predict its future direction. What can be confirmed is that these cases will be included as part of Binance's overall product risk assessment, affecting its caution level and pace of advancement when dealing with quasi-securities products. For the outside world, dramatizing the regulatory game excessively is less productive than acknowledging it as a structural constraint in the daily operations of exchanges.
● Potential competitive landscape outline: If Binance's exploration validates compliance feasibility and demand intensity in the market, it is not out of the question that other leading platforms may follow suit in launching similar "traditional asset tokenization" services in the coming years. Although we cannot currently fabricate the fee rates or contract details of competing products, it is reasonable to expect that stock tokens may become a new traffic entry point and differentiated track once the compliance framework becomes clearer, redefining the boundaries between exchanges and traditional brokerages.
Betting on New Financial Interfaces Under Uncertain Regulation
From a broader perspective, Binance's exploration of restarting stock tokens symbolizes that a new "interface" between traditional finance and the crypto world is being redesigned. Whether the final form is stock tokens, on-chain custody certificates, or other RWA variants, they all point in one direction: capital markets are attempting to use new infrastructure to carry the trading and accounting logic of old-world assets.
The most prominent contradiction in this process is the regulatory oscillation between protecting investors and encouraging innovation, as well as the project parties' trade-offs between compliance costs and product imagination. On one hand, regulators cannot ignore the systemic risks brought by cross-border distribution, leveraged amplification, and information asymmetry; on the other hand, if a one-size-fits-all approach is applied based on traditional securities logic, many innovative models will struggle to find experimental space in the early stages.
In the foreseeable future, attempts like Binance's stock tokens will largely remain in the narrative and experimental stage. The actual scaling will depend on the practical landing of U.S. market structure legislation and the clarification of attitudes toward quasi-securities token products in major jurisdictions like Europe and Asia. Until then, any optimistic or pessimistic estimates regarding revenue potential and regulatory leniency are likely to carry emotional overtones.
For ordinary investors, a more pragmatic approach is to continuously monitor subsequent regulatory signals and product detail disclosures: such as the actual applicable licensing pathways, custody and clearing arrangements, and investor protection mechanisms, rather than making overly optimistic or pessimistic investment decisions based on current scattered "exploration" news. The interface is being designed, but whether it ultimately leads to opportunities or risks still requires time and institutional answers.
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