Written by: Guo Fangxin, Sha Jun

The strong narrative ability of SpaceX is something that anyone who has paid attention to the stories of Musk's Starlink and Mars colonization would have felt. Many friends who previously showed no interest in the U.S. stock market have privately messaged Crypto Salad, wanting to know how to enter the U.S. stock market. For us Chinese residents, entering directly is a daunting task. Therefore, many people have ignited their enthusiasm for "tokenization of U.S. stocks." Crypto Salad does not provide any investment advice or recommendations here, but as always, will dissect the underlying logic of U.S. stock tokenization, leaving the rest to your own judgment.

In the previous article ("Global Listing, 24-Hour Stock Trading? Analyzing the NYSE's On-Chain 'Conspiracy'"), we analyzed in detail what kind of U.S. stock tokenization platform the NYSE aims to achieve, delving into its underlying logic. If the past year was limited to exploration and attempts at Web3 for U.S. stock tokenization, then with Nasdaq and the NYSE officially launching tokenized stock attempts in 2026, this has completely ended this “self-indulgence” within the circle. The Berlin Wall between U.S. stocks and crypto assets has actually collapsed.

We have previously dissected the technical elements of the NYSE platform, including 24/7 trading, fractional share mechanics, real-time settlement based on stablecoins, and the issuance of native digital securities. This article will not repeat these details but will try to address two deeper questions: Why did the NYSE choose to initiate this at this moment? What is the future of U.S. stock tokenization?

1. "Why now?"

To understand "why now," one must first grasp where the true constraints of the securities market lie. The traditional market has long maintained fixed trading hours not because the matching system cannot operate continuously but because clearing, settlement, and margin management heavily depend on banking hours. Once the banking system closes, liquidity flow and risk control encounter breakpoints, naturally limiting trading hours. The NYSE's proposal to cover the funding gap during non-business hours through on-chain settlement and tokenized financial instruments is essentially reshaping the market's time structure.

Backed by its parent company ICE, the NYSE is collaborating with the Bank of New York Mellon and Citibank to promote tokenized deposit arrangements that allow clearing members to allocate funds and fulfill margin obligations during non-business hours. This is an absolutely critical step. The systemic risk of 24/7 trading does not lie in matching but rather in whether margin and liquidity can operate continuously. When "money" itself is tokenized, 24/7 trading becomes feasible.

So, why is there such a focus on time? In the traditional financial context, weekends, holidays, and late nights represent liquidity gaps. Even with dark pools supporting it, due to time constraints and dispersed participants, genuine price discovery cannot take place. Various U.S. stock tokenization platforms also cannot truly operate 24/7.

However, today, in 2026, this "financial vacuum period" is violently filled by tokenized contract markets. In the current capital markets, risk preferences are being revealed in "minutes." For example, the series of contracts on the world's largest decentralized prediction market, Polymarket, regarding "U.S. military strikes on Iran" saw a cumulative trading volume exceeding $529 million. While ordinary investors are busy searching for "Iran," "casualties," and news releases, real risk pricing has already been completed through the odds in the prediction market. Meanwhile, BTC, as a 24/7 liquid risk asset, is also reflecting geopolitical shifts almost every second.

This may be one of the reasons why the NYSE feels it must "flip the table": if the U.S. stock market continues to maintain that traditional 9-to-5 clearing system, it will completely lose the "first pricing power" of global core assets.

However, if this matter is only understood as an upgrade in after-hours trading, it still underestimates its significance. When funds begin to settle on-chain, the ecological niche of financial institutions will undergo redistribution. The traditional path is for banks to pool funds and earn interest differentials, brokers to earn transaction fees, and issuers to tell stories to attract capital. Funds circulate sequentially through different institutions, with each link having its own profit logic. When stablecoins become settlement and margin tools, and trading, clearing, and fund management can be completed on the same technical layer, the value chain that was originally dispersed across different institutions may be compressed to fewer nodes. On-chain platforms can not only earn transaction fees but may also engage in fund management and liquidity organization. Of course, this does not mean banks will disappear, but it means funds no longer have to be deposited within the traditional banking system. To put it more intuitively: in the past, you had to first deposit money in the bank and then transfer it to a broker account to complete a transaction; in the future, the path may change to where your wallet is your account, and settlement is completion. The shortening of funding paths is itself a structural shock.

For this reason, the NYSE did not choose to operate independently of the regulatory system but deliberately embedded tokenization within the existing market structure. The platform emphasizes non-discriminatory access but limits it to qualified broker-dealers. Tokenization does not change the legal attributes of securities; holders still fully enjoy dividend rights and governance rights. The on-chain form of assets does not alter their legal essence. This restraint is precisely key: the NYSE aims not to establish a "wild token market" but to integrate on-chain forms into the most core and stringent securities regulatory logic. Innovations that can genuinely traverse cycles are never the most radical but the forms that can withstand compliance and infrastructure tests.

2. Where is the future of U.S. stock tokenization?

Major Web3 exchanges have an innate sensitivity and rapid response capability. While mainstream media are still trying to analyze where SpaceX holds value, platforms like MyHub MSX have already opened the Pre-IPO market for SpaceX. Other exchanges are taking corresponding actions as well; Robinhood even launched Robinhood Ventures, allowing everyone to participate in investing in private equity funds, focusing on building non-public companies of future technology. According to reports from Kraken, its tokenized stock perpetual contracts (xStocks) launched last year amassed a trading volume of $25 billion in under a year.

However, in reality, exchanges may not be the only traffic entry in the future. With Binance, Bitget, OKX, and various Web3 wallets starting to support the buying and selling of on-chain assets, wallets themselves have become a new generation of traffic entry. Wallets are no longer just storage tools but interfaces aggregating trading, DeFi, staking, and investments. As assets can be transferred directly on-chain, the traditional path of "depositing into an exchange and then trading" is also being shortened. Who exactly is making money off DeFi? It’s the price differences and market-making profits arising from improved fund flow efficiency—a redistribution of traditional intermediary structures. When the NYSE launches its tokenization platform, it is actually responding to this reality: if mainstream exchanges do not actively enter the on-chain form, on-chain liquidity will form a self-circulation on other platforms.

Deeper competitive collaboration is also occurring between stablecoins and sovereign digital currencies. Researching RWA has been ongoing for over a year, and we have always believed that the current most successful RWA is stablecoins, while the explosive growth of RWA is public company stocks, and at some point in the future, truly real assets RWA will increase. The U.S. has clearly stated that stablecoins will not be issued directly by the central bank but will allow market entities to participate; China, on the other hand, has made it clear that only the state can issue digital RMB. Whether stablecoins can accrue interest or possess attributes similar to bank deposits involves competition for monetary ecological niches. When stablecoins become settlement tools, they are not only payment mediums but are closer to "digital fiat currency forms." If the NYSE's platform is based on stablecoins for settlement, it will inevitably participate in this broader institutional competition.

3. Conclusion

If 2025 was the year of applications and trials for U.S. stock tokenization, then 2026 may become the year of institutional forks. As the after-hours trading system begins to loosen, as funds themselves begin to be tokenized, and as wallets become the new traffic entry, the time structure and fund structure of the securities market are being quietly rewritten. This is not as simple as "stocks on-chain"; it is a hierarchical migration of market infrastructure. In this process, whoever can master the collaborative logic of trading, clearing, and funding simultaneously will be closer to the market form of the future.