Original Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
Binance announced that it will launch Tesla (TSLA) perpetual contracts on January 28, with a maximum leverage of 5 times. The contract tracks the price of Tesla's common stock (NASDAQ: TSLA).
This marks Binance's first clear product return to the U.S. stock market since it closed its stock token service in July 2021. The evolution of product forms reflects the cautious yet ambitious exploration of traditional financial boundaries by the crypto giant under compliance constraints.
The Fleeting "Equity Token" Experiment
In April 2021, Binance launched stock tokens with Tesla as the first underlying asset, with the core narrative being to allow users to gain exposure to U.S. stock price fluctuations at a lower threshold and to enable fractional trading. At the time, the external narrative described equity tokens as tokens that track the price performance of traditional financial stocks, backed by real stocks.
According to Binance's announcement, the minimum trading size for Tesla stock tokens on Binance was one percent of the stock token, with each Tesla equity token representing one share of Tesla stock. Based on Tesla's stock price of $760 at that time, Binance investors could buy in at a minimum price of $7.6. The trading pair for Tesla equity tokens was "TSLA/BUSD," priced, settled, and collateralized in BUSD. Users had to go through Level 2 KYC (Level 3 for German users), and trading was prohibited for users from countries such as China, the U.S., and Turkey.
At that time, Binance chose to collaborate with German financial company CM Equity AG and Swiss tokenization company Digital Assets AG to develop the listing and trading services for equity tokens. Interestingly, in October 2020, FTX launched U.S. stock token trading services, with the same partners, CM-Equity AG and Digital Assets AG.
After Binance launched equity tokens, the regulatory response was swift and severe. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) was the first to take action, with the Financial Times reporting that the FCA had intervened to investigate the product's operational model and applicable regulations. The German financial regulator BaFin subsequently announced that it had reasonable grounds to suspect Binance of violating securities laws. In the eyes of regulators at the time, if an asset has rights to stock returns and dividends, then regardless of whether it is cloaked in blockchain or called a "token," it is essentially a security and must comply with the strictest securities laws.
In the face of this regulatory crackdown, Binance had to make compromises. On July 16, 2021, just three months after the product launch, Binance announced it would stop supporting stock tokens and completely withdrew from the business in October of the same year, seen as a painful defeat after DeFi's direct assault on TradFi.
From a commercial and compliance perspective, the pressures of that year had typical characteristics. First, stock tokens spanned multiple aspects of securities issuance, brokerage distribution, trading venues, and investor protection, making it difficult for a single platform to cover the requirements of different jurisdictions with the same license.
Second, investors could easily develop rights expectations regarding stock tokenization; if details such as voting rights, dividend rights, redemption mechanisms, and custody arrangements were not clearly expressed, it would amplify disputes and enforcement risks. Third, at that time, global regulatory scrutiny of the crypto industry was in a sensitive phase, and once a platform extended its reach to traditional financial assets, regulatory attention was often heightened.
Regulatory Changes, Restarting Stock Token Business
Five years later, the market has clearly undergone significant changes. The total market value of stock tokenization has surpassed $1 billion, growing more than 50 times over the past year, with xStock's market value exceeding $600 million, accounting for 58.3% of the market share; Ondo Global Markets has seen rapid growth in stock token market value on the BNB Chain, exceeding $50 million, together with Ethereum, accounting for 39% of the market share.
Recently, the New York Stock Exchange announced it would seek approval from regulators to allow companies to issue securities in the form of digital tokens. Unlike the traditional model where the NYSE is only open on weekdays and closed at night, the new platform will offer "24/7" trading services. Additionally, the platform will support instant settlement and allow investors to fund trades using stablecoins pegged to the U.S. dollar.
According to Barron's, to support the NYSE's ecosystem, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is collaborating with banks including Bank of New York Mellon and Citigroup to support its clearinghouse's tokenized deposit business.
Before this, under the Trump administration's shift towards a more crypto-friendly policy, TradFi has been actively absorbing the technological advantages of DeFi.
As early as September 2025, Nasdaq applied to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow investors to trade tokenized versions of stocks. In the broader asset management field, the U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) subsidiary, the Depository Trust Company (DTC), has received a no-action letter from the SEC, approving its provision of real-world asset tokenization services in a controlled production environment. DTC is expected to launch this service in the second half of 2026. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon), and State Street have all launched tokenized money market fund projects, allowing clients to hold digital tokens representing fund shares.
The launch of TSLA perpetual contracts on Binance is closer to traditional derivatives exposure compared to the stock tokens of the past. For the platform, this path still narratively points to bringing TradFi assets into the crypto space, while legally and compliantly making it easier to discuss the product within the derivatives framework, reducing direct collisions with sensitive issues like securities issuance and sales.
Will this bring about a new round of market trends? The signal significance outweighs the funding variables
If we bring the question back to the market trading level, TSLA perpetual contracts seem more like a signal. Crypto trading platforms are still looking for new connections to traditional assets, especially in the more familiar derivatives arena. Secondly, the narrative of tokenized stocks has not died down in the industry and is being taken over by more compliant entities.
Ultimately, how much premium the market will give, and whether the crypto market will emerge with an independent trend due to Binance's return to U.S. stock targets, depends on whether funds see it as a new risk-bearing vehicle, and whether regulators will allow such products to spread in more regions, with more targets, and at more leverage levels.
From an advantage perspective, such products can bring the volatility of traditional assets and event-driven narratives into the crypto space, enhancing trading choices and capital efficiency, and providing more collateralizable price anchors for on-chain balance sheets. From a risk perspective, the perpetual contract mechanism itself also brings basis, funding rates, and strong liquidation risks under extreme volatility, with traders also bearing the compounded risks of the microstructure of derivatives.
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