Author: TT3Labs

For many digital nomads, money is often on the chain, constantly shifting between different time zones and countries, with no fixed base. I am one of them. After the tokenization of US stocks emerged, it became possible to buy tokens for Apple and Tesla using stablecoins without moving money off the chain, enabling trading 24 hours a day. The money is already on the chain, and it's inconvenient to open a US stock account, so this kind of product seems to be made for us. A term that appears repeatedly in the official introductions of various platforms is "inclusive." But who exactly does this inclusivity benefit? The more I look, the less useful it seems for people like me, while the exchanges promoting it are quietly changing their business models.

Before the June listing of SpaceX, several exchanges, including Binance, Bybit, Bitget, and MEXC, launched a subscription model allowing users to place orders using stablecoins ahead of the listing, distributing corresponding tokens based on the allocation received at the IPO. Binance alone collected about $557 million from nearly 27,700 wallet addresses. On the day of the listing, nearly all these exchanges were unable to secure adequate supply from the IPO, leading to many subscriptions being refunded and users who eagerly anticipated the IPO left empty-handed.

These exchanges did not hold SpaceX shares; they collected users' money first and then commissioned an intermediary, xStocks, to buy in the market. SpaceX, being the largest IPO in history, attracted global attention, and with too many bidders and too few goods, the intermediaries could not purchase enough stock, leaving the exchanges empty-handed. Actually, it wasn't just crypto users who missed out; clients of Fidelity and Charles Schwab also received only a small portion, but they managed to get it because they acquired it directly from the underwriters; these exchanges were separated by an offshore intermediary, and when that connection failed, refunds were the only option.

However, what was missed was merely the shortcut of the IPO; SpaceX tokens are still available. Once SpaceX is publicly listed and its stock is traded on the market, the issuer can buy real shares and mint tokens as usual.

Looking back, RWA (Real World Assets) was initially created for institutions

In 2022, Terra supported nearly 20% high interest by subsidizing, drawing huge amounts of funds into its stablecoin UST, but this yield had no real source and depended on subsidies. Once confidence wavered and UST de-pegged, its sister coin LUNA was inflated to zero within days, causing the then top-ranked project Terra to collapse almost instantaneously. This incident made the market realize that high yields purely supported by subsidies are unreliable, and money began to seek real, non-speculative returns. The safest returns in the financial market are US Treasury bonds, but money on the chain cannot reach them due to the intermediate barriers of traditional financial accounts and custody. In this context, RWA was born to bridge this gap, turning assets like US Treasury bonds into on-chain tokens, allowing money on the chain to earn interest without leaving the chain.

From day one, it served institutions. BlackRock's 2024 BUIDL, a tokenized US Treasury bond fund, has a size of over $2 billion but is distributed among only about a hundred holders, with a minimum investment of five million dollars. This is the starting point for RWA, catered to large funds.

Now, the size of RWA, especially the market size of tokenized US stocks, is not very clear to everyone. Ondo once claimed itself as the largest issuer of tokenized stocks, stating that it broke the $1 billion mark in less than eight months of operation. If looking at the entire RWA, even data sources can show figures that differ by multiples on the same day.

In June 2026, Citi Institute, Ge Citi's research arm, released a report predicting that the tokenized asset market could reach $5.5 trillion by 2030, with an interval between $2.7 trillion and $8.2 trillion. However, this is a long-term estimate based on assumptions: it assumes that by 2030, 10% of US short-term debt and 3% of stock market value will be on-chain.

Being pegged to stocks does not mean owning stocks

The biggest difference between tokenized US stocks and ordinary cryptocurrencies is whether the price is linked to a tangible entity. Ordinary tokens rely on emotions and consensus, while tokenized US stocks are pegged to actual US stocks.

However, pegging a stock does not mean you own that stock. What you receive is a certificate tracking the stock price, which corresponds to price and dividends, but is not a stock itself, and typically does not confer voting rights. Mainstream issuers are all offshore; Ondo is in the British Virgin Islands, and xStocks is in Jersey, neither registered with the SEC, thereby excluding users from the US, UK, and other regions. Your trading counterpart is an offshore company, not the publicly listed company itself. Whether it is useful to you depends on whether you can legally buy US stocks.

People who can open accounts with legitimate brokers may not find it is the optimal choice for them. The often-touted benefit is the low entry barrier, being able to buy a small piece of a high-priced stock for just a few dollars, but this is no longer unique, as Fidelity, Charles Schwab, and Interactive Brokers all support fractional shares, starting from one dollar. The remaining conveniences are simply 24/7 trading and keeping money on the chain, but with a very real cost: giving up real equity, foregoing the protection of licensed brokers and investor safeguards, and replacing a regulated counterparty with an offshore company. Convenience can streamline the experience but is hard to justify as a reason to purchase an asset.

The real stage where it can demonstrate its value is for those who are shut out of the legitimate routes to buy US stocks in their locations. In regions with foreign exchange and policy controls, ordinary people face limitations on purchasing US stocks through formal channels due to exchange quotas and account eligibility requirements. Tokenized US stocks allow them to access the ups and downs of US stocks using stablecoins, which was previously difficult to obtain. However, it does not solve the issue of not being able to buy a specific stock; it circumvents the previously restricted purchasing behavior, enabling participation in the fluctuations of the most regulated market globally.

The exchanges have gained a new growth curve, but they may have also lost something.

In the past, many of the items traded on crypto exchanges lacked fundamentals. The value of a token could rise purely based on emotional and consensus-driven factors, resulting in either a sudden plummet or a rapid increase. This enormous uncertainty is both a risk and the allure of this market.

Tokenized US stocks have placed fundamentally sound items on the shelf, allowing buyers to clearly understand what they are purchasing for the first time.

The nature of the exchange business is changing. When an exchange derives more and more of its revenue from products grounded in real assets, it increasingly resembles a broker on the chain. Brokers are stable and long-lasting, but their returns are confined by real-world yield rates, and no one will use limitless imagination to describe them. This business has shifted from relying on emotions and narratives with significant volatility to being anchored in real assets that are understandable and more stable. More stable, but no longer attractive.

The SpaceX instance at the beginning of the month actually provided a signal. On that day, the tokens that were normally issued belonged to those who could source the stock themselves and directly connected with underwriters; those that stumbled were those who outsourced their supply to intermediaries and lacked that capability themselves. Whether exchanges need to develop the attributes of a broker is now a pressure test that has arrived early.

The business has changed, and the people needed have also changed. An exchange increasingly resembling a broker requires people who understand securities, compliance, and risk control rather than mainly crypto natives who entered the industry out of passion. These two types of people are now being mixed together in the same company, and the barrier between traditional finance and crypto is gradually thinning. These types of changes are more worthy of attention from industry professionals.

RWA was originally designed to connect on-chain money to real yields for institutions, and retail investors were never its target audience. For those who can legally buy US stocks, it may not be the optimal choice; for those blocked by regulations, it offers a previously hard-to-find channel. It hasn’t brought much new to ordinary people.

The hot sentiment in this market is gradually overshadowing the appeal of virtual currencies, as exchanges gradually depend on this type of business, their charm may also gradually fade, and this industry may no longer produce new stories of the richest people.

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