Author: Frank, PANews

The on-chain trading of US stocks has become a hot topic in the recently quiet market.

On March 8, Swiss tokenization issuer Backed launched the Coinbase stock token wbCOIN on the Base chain, allowing users to trade it with USDC via CoWSwap, claiming it is 1:1 pegged to the value of $COIN stock and carries legal claim rights. Although Backed emphasizes that there is no official association with Coinbase, this move has sparked heated discussions in the community: Will the tokenization of US stocks usher in a new growth cycle? In the context of a persistently sluggish market, can this "new wine in an old bottle" narrative of stock tokenization become a new story to build a bottom?

Narrative First, Value Later: The Cold Contrast of US Stock Tokenization

With the pro-crypto Trump administration coming to power, the lawsuit between the US SEC and Coinbase also came to an end. In early 2025, Jesse Pollak, head of the Base protocol, stated on X that Coinbase is considering introducing tokenized $COIN stocks to the Base network for US users. However, it will take time for Coinbase to launch this business in compliance with regulations.

Backed's swift action has taken the lead. According to official information, Backed was established in 2021 and initially received investment support from institutions such as Gnosis and Semantic. Backed's headquarters and operations are primarily aimed at the global market, with its products issued under the EU regulatory framework, complying with MiFID II requirements, and having passed the EU's prospectus approval.

However, wbCOIN is not Backed's first stock tokenization product; as early as July 2024, Backed collaborated with INX to launch tokenized stock trading for NVIDIA. In addition, Backed has also launched tokenized products for various stock assets such as the S&P 500 and Tesla. Yet, at the time of their launch, the market's focus was not on the topic of securities tokenization, and now the market urgently needs some reasonable narratives to rebuild confidence.

However, the lack of interest in Backed's products is not solely due to their inability to target the US market or the market's sluggishness. The trading volume of wbCOIN after its launch is evidently not as hot as the topic itself. As of March 11, the TVL of wbCOIN was approximately $4.42 million.

Data from Aerodrome shows that its trading volume was only $3,352, even less than that of a newly issued MEME coin.

This lackluster performance is not solely due to the short time since wbCOIN's launch—another product, BNVDA, which launched earlier, also had a trading volume of only $113, similarly ignored.

Despite the hot concept, the current US stock tokenization market is still in its early stages, with limited scale and activity. Perhaps tokenized products from Coinbase could spark greater trading enthusiasm.

Tokenized US Stocks: Old Bottle, New Wine; Compliance is the Primary Barrier

In fact, moving US stocks onto the blockchain is not a brand-new idea. Before this recent wave of attempts, the crypto industry and traditional financial institutions had already explored this, but most ended in failure.

The once-prominent FTX exchange also provided tokenized trading services for US stocks, including Tesla and GameStop, between 2020 and 2022. However, FTX's dramatic collapse in 2022 abruptly halted this business. Rumors afterward questioned whether FTX's stock tokens were fully backed by the corresponding stocks, further undermining market trust in exchange-issued tokenized stocks.

In 2021, Binance also attempted to launch tokenized stock products corresponding to Tesla, Coinbase, Apple, and others, allowing users to purchase fractional shares of these stock tokens. However, as regulatory pressures mounted, financial regulators in the UK and Germany warned that these products might violate securities laws just weeks after Binance launched the stock tokens. Within three months, Binance announced the delisting of all stock tokens.

Additionally, another exchange that once specialized in providing tokenized stock trading, Bittrex Global, also chose to shut down its trading platform and undergo bankruptcy liquidation after facing regulatory pressure and SEC lawsuits.

This indicates that compliance barriers were the main reason for the failure of exchanges to issue tokenized US stocks in the previous round of attempts. The current market's renewed interest in US stock tokenization is influenced by several factors:

1. With the Trump administration's emphasis on and support for crypto, the tense relationship between cryptocurrency and regulation has eased.
2. The market has entered a period of fatigue, necessitating a return to narratives supported by real value.
3. The technical and compliance solutions have matured. Compared to the previous chaotic growth, today's crypto market places greater emphasis on compliance design and technical safeguards. For example, Backed obtains EU-approved prospectuses for each token before issuance, clarifying the rights of token holders to the underlying stocks. In terms of technology, the performance of oracles and public chains has improved significantly.

One Thousandth Proportion and Trillion-Dollar Expectations: The Real Dilemma of Tokenized Stocks

Despite impressive growth rates, the actual market size of tokenized stocks still shows a significant gap compared to institutional predictions. Essentially, whether it is US stock tokenization or tokenization of other securities products, they can be classified as RWA asset types. However, cryptocurrencies and US stocks are both high-volatility, high-liquidity financial assets, while the trading scale and capital volume of US stocks, along with the quality fundamentals of US stock assets, are what the crypto world craves.

The industry holds extremely optimistic expectations for the future of stock tokenization, with some authoritative institutions predicting that the market for tokenized assets could reach several trillion dollars by around 2030: for example, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that global tokenized assets could reach $16 trillion by 2030. The Security Token Market report even predicts that by 2030, $30 trillion in assets will be tokenized, with stocks, real estate, bonds, and gold being the main driving forces.

As of March 11, the total on-chain assets of global RWA were approximately $17.8 billion, with the total value of stock assets being about $15.43 million, accounting for less than one-thousandth, and the total trading volume for the month was only $18 million. Clearly, within the RWA sector, stock tokenization remains an immature market.

However, in terms of growth rate and risk resistance, tokenized stocks still possess certain competitiveness. In July 2024, the total on-chain value of tokenized stocks was only about $50 million, which has tripled in six months. This growth rate is significantly higher than the capital increase of other altcoins during the same period.

Recently, the crypto market has experienced a significant correction, with Bitcoin falling below $80,000, and the total market capitalization of the entire crypto market has reverted to levels seen in the first half of 2024, with a decline of 30% over the past three months. However, during the same period, tokenized stocks have performed significantly better, remaining at historically high levels. This indicates that the overall volatility of the US stock market is much less affected by any single asset compared to the crypto market, and the differing volatility patterns of different asset categories lead to a more stable overall market. This also provides a new value anchor for tokenized stocks.

For current investors, US stock tokenization is neither a savior for a bear market nor a fleeting concept. It is more like a seed that needs patient waiting to break ground—under the triangular support of compliance, technology, and market sentiment, whether this seed can grow into a towering tree may lie in the next policy release from the SEC, Coinbase's next compliance action, or the flow of funds from retail and institutional investors in the next bull market. The only certainty is that this experiment is far from over.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。