From MyStonks to Backed, why are US stocks in a hurry to tokenize?

Author: Nomos Labs Source: mirror

The tokenization of US stocks is becoming the focus of the global blockchain market in 2025 at an unexpected speed. According to RWA.xyz data, the current market value of tokenized stocks is US$422 million, and the number of addresses holding tokenized stocks is 50,000, a surge of nearly 2,000% compared to 30 days ago.

If you have recently paid attention to platforms such as MyStonks, Backed, and Kraken, or even on Web3 exchanges such as Gate.io and Bybit, you may have discovered that traditional US stock stars such as Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia have been quickly moved to the chain, and are no longer limited to Wall Street trading windows, but are circulated among global investors 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

This wave of "urgent" tokenization is not only a technological breakthrough, but also the inevitable result of market demand and regulatory relaxation, which is accelerating the change of the global investment landscape.

1. Sudden acceleration in 2025: Why did the US stock market begin to migrate to the chain?

The concept of blockchain is not the first time to be combined with traditional finance, but why did the tokenization of US stocks enter an explosive period in 2025? Technological progress, market demand, regulatory relaxation and capital logic together constitute the underlying driving force of this trend.

First, the technical bottlenecks have been solved one by one. After years of development, mainstream public chains such as Ethereum and Solana have the ability to support large-scale asset tokenization. Ethereum provides the ERC-20 standard to ensure on-chain compatibility, while Solana has become a popular choice for trading platforms such as Kraken and Bybit with its high throughput and low cost. At the same time, the gradual maturity of cross-chain bridges (such as Wormhole) and decentralized identity authentication (DID) mechanisms has made it increasingly difficult for traditional assets to enter the chain.

More importantly, in 2025, investors in the global market, especially those in emerging economies, have unprecedented enthusiasm for investing in U.S. stocks. However, the traditional trading channels for U.S. stocks have extremely high barriers to entry for overseas investors: complicated account opening procedures, high fees, and limited trading hours have significantly suppressed the inflow of overseas funds. On-chain U.S. stocks completely bypass the traditional account opening and trading processes, allowing global users to easily use stablecoins to directly participate in investment transactions in U.S. assets. This 24-hour, low-threshold, low-cost investment channel quickly met the long-standing global market demand.

The deeper driving force comes from the global layout strategy of the US dollar. The stablecoin market has created a transaction volume of 27.6 trillion US dollars in 2024, even surpassing Visa and MasterCard. The tokenization of US stocks is providing a new value flow path for US dollar stablecoins, becoming another secret channel for the global return of US capital. The on-chainization of US stocks seems to be a financial innovation, but in fact it is deeply bound to the internationalization strategy of the US dollar. Using stablecoins and on-chain US stocks as tools, US financial institutions and regulators are attracting global capital to gather towards US dollar assets in a more flexible way.

From technical feasibility to global capital flows, and then to the US dollar financial hegemony strategy, the acceleration of the tokenization of US stocks is not an accidental phenomenon, but a carefully planned financial ecological reconstruction. The "Apple" and "Tesla" on the chain are not just digital copies of traditional stocks, but also structural changes in the rules of the global capital game.

However, the outbreak of US stocks on the chain is only superficial. Behind this "urgent" tokenization movement, the real operator is the strategic game between exchanges and tokenization platforms.

Second, behind the rise of on-chain US stocks: the real driving force of exchanges and platforms

The rapid development of on-chain US stocks is not the active choice of the US stock market itself, but the result of the strategic promotion of on-chain asset platforms and exchanges. From MyStonks to Backed to Kraken, the rise of these platforms all highlight the different demands and games of different market players.

For professional asset tokenization platforms (such as Backed and MyStonks), on-chain US stocks mean new business models and regulatory arbitrage space. Take Backed as an example. By cooperating with Interactive Brokers and European custodian Clearstream, they can bypass the vague regulatory area of ​​the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), compliantly host actual US stock assets in Europe in the form of tokens, and sell them globally through on-chain platforms. This model not only reduces regulatory compliance costs, but also opens up more flexible investment channels for global users.

MyStonks has chosen a more decentralized path, developing an on-chain asset model based on ERC-20 and NFT standards, cooperating with Fidelity's asset custody, emphasizing DID identity authentication and transparency, and trying to build a new bridge between decentralized finance (DeFi) and the traditional securities market.

The participation of trading platforms such as Kraken is more like capturing the next narrative outlet: expanding trading categories, enhancing user stickiness, and reducing the risk of user assets flowing to traditional financial institutions by introducing US stock tokens. This participation strategy is not only a natural extension of commercial expansion, but also reflects the high expectations of on-chain exchanges for "real assets accessing Web3".

The combined effect of these multiple driving forces ultimately formed an accelerated competition for "on-chain US stocks". The mutual collaboration and competition between exchanges and asset tokenization platforms have jointly shaped the trend of U.S. stock tokenization in 2025, and also laid the groundwork for the next evolution of the U.S. stock tokenization ecosystem.

Third, explorers of different paths try to answer how to put U.S. stocks on the chain?

MyStonks's approach is the most "native". It makes stocks into NFTs and ERC-20 tokens, which circulate on the chain through the Ethereum network. It also connects to the DID identity system, trying to meet compliance requirements while protecting privacy. On MyStonks, users can not only trade stock tokens, but also "own" them, just like a USDC in your wallet. But this model also brings an old problem: the liquidity and composability of NFTs are always limited, and the efficiency and user experience of on-chain transactions are still in the early stages.

Backed takes a completely different path. It is more like an extension of a compliant financial institution, hosting real US stocks in a European regulated securities system, and then issuing 1:1 anchored tokens. These tokens can be traded on the chain, but the core assets are held by the platform rather than by the users. The value of Backed lies in lowering the threshold for traditional institutions to participate in Web3, but under this model, users still have limited control over their assets, and it is difficult to avoid the essential problem of "trusting intermediaries".

Kraken regards itself as an "interface platform". It does not build its own token model, but directly integrates existing token products such as Backed to provide traditional users with a familiar interface and convenient trading experience, while maintaining basic compatibility with on-chain assets. Although this approach lowers the user threshold, it also means that its on-chain attributes are weaker and still rely more on the credibility of the platform itself.

The three modes emphasize different things: MyStonks emphasizes "assets belong to users", Backed emphasizes "assets are truly credible", and Kraken emphasizes "transactions are convenient enough". They are three paths, and they are also answering a common question: Can the core assets of traditional finance also have their own "universal expressions" on the chain like USDT?

This is not actually a dispute over technical routes, but a design problem of "who trusts whom": Do users trust the code? Trust the platform? Or trust the brokers and custodians behind it? These three companies are participating in a future standard experiment with different answers.

Fourth, trend significance and impact: What financial landscape is being reshaped by on-chain US stocks?

On-chain US stocks are actually changing more than just the trading method.

The most intuitive change is that stocks that were originally only traded during the opening hours of US stocks have become assets that can be bought and sold 24 hours a day. Whether it is early in the morning in New York or late at night in East Asia, users can place orders, match, and trade. US stocks no longer belong only to "American daytime", but have become global assets that operate around the clock.

The bigger change is that it allows ordinary users around the world to "buy US stocks directly" for the first time. In the past, if you want to invest in stocks such as Tesla and Apple, you have to open a US stock account, exchange currency, and pass the compliance threshold first. Now, as long as you have a stablecoin, you can do it in one step. Cross-border investment has changed from a complicated process to a simple wallet operation.

For DeFi, the U.S. stocks on the chain not only bring a new asset class, but also the first time that real financial assets have truly entered the blockchain. These tokens have real corporate support and cash flow, and can directly participate in liquidity pools, lending, and even derivative design. Therefore, DeFi has a credit foundation linked to real assets.

When such assets enter DeFi, they are no longer "digital currencies" in an abstract sense, but operational financial instruments with stable valuation anchors and regulatory endorsements. They can be combined, mortgaged, split, and repackaged to gradually build a more mature on-chain financial ecosystem.

So when we ask "Why are U.S. stocks in a hurry to tokenize", we may see a gust of wind or a craze. But if we look down, behind it is the re-dominance of U.S. dollar assets in global liquidity, the active approach of crypto platforms to the real credit system, and another milestone node for blockchain to break the dimensional wall.

Conclusion

From MyStonks to Backed and Kraken, they seem to be three different product solutions, but in fact they reflect the strong desire of blockchain for real assets. In the past few years, we have witnessed how stablecoins have become a new carrier of the U.S. dollar. Now, the tokenization of U.S. stocks is also on the same path - not to copy traditional finance, but to introduce a more credible, familiar and liquid asset anchor for the on-chain market.

That’s why we say that the reason why the tokenization of U.S. stocks is “urgent” is not because of how anxious the U.S. stocks themselves are, but because the on-chain market really needs a more stable, more real, and easier to understand physical asset.

On the surface, this tokenization trend is the “tokenization of traditional assets”, but in fact, Web3 is actively looking for an asset logic that can support transactions, liquidity, and user trust. Especially at a time when crypto native assets are highly volatile and DeFi TVL growth is slowing down, U.S. stocks, as “high-quality targets in the real world”, have been quickly introduced into the Web3 ecosystem, becoming a traffic tool that exchanges are competing for, and also the starting point of a new round of narratives.

From 24-hour non-stop trading, to cross-border investment bypassing brokers, to stablecoins as settlement channels, the changes brought about by the tokenization of U.S. stocks have long surpassed the product itself.