The New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, OKX and Kraken&xStocks stock tokenization trading are two forks on this big tree The news density in the past week is no longer like a natural evolution of the market, but more like an unspoken collective display of cards. Firstly, the Intercontinental Exchange made a strategic investment in OKX, investing at a valuation of $25 billion and obtaining a seat on the board of directors. Three days later, Nasdaq announced a partnership with Payward, the parent company of Kraken, to jointly build a new infrastructure for stock tokenization. Both behemoths are laying out their plans for the stock tokenization market, but are they trying to do the same thing?. PS: Kraken has acquired Backed, the company behind xStocks From my personal perspective, although it looks similar, the focus of the business is not the same. If we talk about similarities first, two traditional exchanges provide regulated markets, compliance for stock sales, regulatory systems, and issuer relationships, while cryptocurrency exchanges provide "channels," "users," and on chain distribution capabilities. To put it simply, traditional exchanges are not running their own cryptocurrency exchanges, but leveraging the existing user network of cryptocurrency exchanges to sell US securities assets to markets that traditional securities firms find difficult to efficiently reach. Intercontinental provides assets for the US futures market and the New York Stock Exchange tokenized equity market, while Nasdaq aims to integrate equity token design with the on chain systems of Kraken and xStocks. Whether it is the New York Stock Exchange and OKX, Nasdaq and Kraken, or xStocks, they provide not only the mapping of stocks as tokens, but also the main narrative of buying and selling stocks with stablecoins to provide tokenized trading, settlement, custody, and distribution of stocks. The first difference is the depth of cooperation. The Intercontinental Exchange and OKX not only cooperate, but also have equity investments, board seats, and broader strategic synergy in the future. That is to say, InterContinental does not treat OKX as a regular channel, but as an important component of its digital asset business layout. What Nasdaq and Kraken are currently publicly announcing is more like a product and infrastructure collaboration, with a focus on jointly developing an equity conversion gateway that enables future stock tokenized assets to flow on regulated markets and chains. The cooperation between Intercontinental and OKX is more like a deeply bound strategic partnership rather than an ordinary business cooperation, while the cooperation between Nasdaq and Kraken is more like a joint attack and defense of three companies. The second difference is that the business lines are different. On one hand, Intercontinental and OKX authorize the use of OKX's spot prices to launch regulated futures, and on the other hand, bring Intercontinental's US futures market and the New York Stock Exchange's stock tokenization market to OKX's global users in the future. So both are not just about tokenizing stocks, but packaging data, futures, stocks, and market entry together. Nasdaq and Kraken are clearly more focused on one thing, which is how to integrate Nasdaq's future equity token design with Kraken and xStocks' on chain system. More concentrated in the field of standardized sales of stock tokens. In human terms, the cooperation between Intercontinental and OKX involves all aspects of the US stock market, including derivatives, focusing on centralized sales and distribution based on compliance, while Nasdaq, Kraken, and xStocks focus on centralized and decentralized compliance and distribution. NASDAQ provides a compliant issuer framework, Kraken provides a user centric platform, and xStocks provides a decentralized platform on the user chain. This highlights the importance of xStocks. According to Kraken's official data, xStocks has accumulated a trading volume of over 25 billion US dollars in less than a year, of which over 4 billion US dollars are settled on chain, and there are over 85000 holders of stocks on the chain. Moreover, xStocks currently supports 7x24 hour on chain transactions. From this perspective, the collaboration between Nasdaq and Kraken can quickly push stock tokenized assets to users. For users, there is no need to change the system, and they have the opportunity to hold more compliant US stock tokenized assets on the original chain and trading platform environment. The more crucial point is that the previous xStocks did not provide users with traditional shareholder rights such as voting rights after tokenization of stocks, but more like on chain exposure to the prices of underlying stocks. And this cooperation with Nasdaq aims to shift the mapping of "only price exposure" towards "retaining true stock rights as much as possible". This means that xStocks will have the opportunity to upgrade to a formal on chain platform for US stock distribution through Nasdaq's compliance. That's also why I think xStocks is the most crucial aspect of this collaboration. end