NYSE's ultimate fate: the end of stock tokenization or the spring of crypto-friendly brokers?

Just now, NYSE announced the launch of a 24/7 on-chain stock trading platform. Simply put: from now on, US stocks can be traded on the blockchain around the clock.

NYSE will launch tokenization stock trading platform

Many people’s first reaction is: “Great! Stocks are finally going fully on-chain!” “Can anyone issue stock tokens now?”

But if you really break down this matter, you’ll find a counterintuitive conclusion:

NYSE stepping out does not mean stock tokenization becomes more free; instead, it signals that the era of private companies issuing stock tokens freely may be coming to an end.

1. First, let’s speak plainly: what is “stock tokenization” (Tokenization stock)?

No need for technical jargon; let’s use a straightforward analogy.

Stocks: You hold a “share” of a company through a broker

Tokenization: Using the broker’s infrastructure, users/institutions mint this “share” into a token on the blockchain

Sounds great, right? Stablestock also thought so mid-year: could we, like stablecoins, create stock tokens via a broker-based underlying, allowing free trading on-chain? The problem lies here. Many compliance and technical issues are involved.

For example, in compliance: if you don’t have a broker yourself, you don’t hold user assets; users can’t transfer shares into a broker, meaning they can only buy from zero to one. Technically: taking stock splits as an example, once stock tokens are issued, complex operations like splits or mergers (which happen frequently in stocks) are hard for smart contracts to handle. If oracles are misused, it could trigger liquidations in perpetual/lending products.

During our months exploring stock tokenization, besides the above issues, we encountered many technical challenges, making us realize that the underlying of stock tokenization is the DTCC or Nasdaq/NYSE, not the issuing company itself. If NYSE/Nasdaq/DTCC do not resolve the foundational issues, stock tokenization will be a path heading toward collapse.

2. Private companies can issue stablecoins, so why can’t they issue stock tokens?

Unlike stablecoins, stock tokens are not something private companies can issue at will. Stablecoins are possible because “the US dollar itself is freely circulating”; stock tokens are not because “stocks are not truly held by brokers or companies.”

Stablecoins are pegged to the dollar. The dollar itself is a freely circulating asset—if you have a bank account, you can receive, pay, transfer. Issuing stablecoins is essentially a form of “acceptance”: users give you 1 USD, and you give them 1 stablecoin on-chain; they can exchange back to 1 USD anytime. As long as reserves are real and redemption reliable, this logic holds. The dollar doesn’t involve dividends, voting, or ownership registration, making the technical and legal structure relatively simple.

Stocks are entirely different. They are not stored in a broker; their final registration and custody are centralized in systems like DTCC. The stocks you buy represent shareholder identity, not a freely transferable asset. Transferring stocks requires clearing, reconciliation, and registration updates—far more complex than a simple transfer of money.

More importantly, stocks constantly undergo events like dividends, voting, splits, and issuance. Each change must be legally valid and accurately reflected in the shareholder register. This means issuing stock tokens is not a “one-and-done” process; it involves managing the entire lifecycle of the stock.

For example, consider deposit, withdrawal, and stock splits.

From the perspective of deposit and withdrawal, a bank account suffices because USD flows through the banking system; transfers don’t require notifying anyone or updating ownership registers. But stocks are not “money”: they involve a complex legal ownership system. The actual custody of stocks isn’t in a broker. Many think that buying stocks in a broker app means the stocks are in that broker; in reality, the final registration and custody are in DTCC (see flowchart below). Shareholder lists, splits, and voting are all based on DTCC records. Unlike money, transferring stocks means changing ownership, updating shareholder lists, and adjusting dividend and voting rights. This isn’t a simple bank transfer; it requires reconciliation between brokers, clearing systems, and central registration. Stocks have never been assets that can be freely moved at will. The business logic and stability coin models are fundamentally different.

From an asset behavior perspective, they are also entirely different. USD can just sit idle. But stocks pay dividends, allow voting, undergo splits, mergers, and issuance. Let’s take a real example: stock split. Netflix announced a 1-for-10 split on 11.17. Suppose a user holds 1,000 NFLX shares in a broker’s inventory (registered in DTCC). Before the split, 1,000 NFLX tokens are circulating on-chain. When the split occurs, the stock in the broker automatically becomes 10,000 shares—no manual operation needed; the clearing and custody system handles it. But what about on-chain? It’s simple: if you forcibly mint 9,000 new NFLX tokens, each original token holder’s holdings automatically become 10 tokens. But who executes this? Who ensures every address is correctly handled? What if users have tokens in DeFi, lending, AMMs? How do you split tokens locked in smart contracts? Who guarantees that the oracle can process the prices timely (if relying solely on off-chain prices, you might have a $10 off-chain price but a $100 on-chain price)? If you don’t split tokens but only change the exchange ratio (1 token = 10 shares), the price system can quickly become chaotic, causing discrepancies between on-chain and off-chain prices, leading to distortions. Every corporate action would require changing rules. This is a highly complex, high-frequency process.

From these examples, it’s clear that whether it’s deposit/withdrawal or stock splits, the most critical infrastructure is the DTCC and NYSE/Nasdaq, not the stock token issuer.

3. NYSE stepping out changes the rules

When NYSE officially enters the stock tokenization space, it’s not just adding a “participant,” but fundamentally shifting the entire industry’s focus.

In early stages, tokenization relied heavily on private projects: project teams issued tokens, mapped to stock value, trying to solve issues like trading hours, cross-border trading, and efficiency. But this model’s premise was that there was no widely recognized, authoritative “official version” yet.

NYSE’s involvement changes this.

Once a stock tokenization scheme supported by top-tier exchanges, clearing systems, and regulatory frameworks appears, market choices will become very clear: most clearinghouses, brokerages, and users will directly connect to the official system, rather than continue using privately issued stock tokens. The reason is simple—official solutions inherently have more complete underlying capabilities.

These official stock tokens often connect directly to mature clearing and custody systems, supporting complex corporate actions like splits, mergers, dividends, voting, acquisitions, and issuance—areas where private schemes have long struggled and are most prone to issues. For institutions, the completeness of functions and clarity of legal responsibilities matter far more than whether it’s “native on-chain.”

More importantly, official endorsement creates liquidity attraction. When clearinghouses, market makers, banks, and large institutions provide services around official tokens, privately issued stock tokens will inevitably face liquidity shortages, valuation discounts, and trust costs. Even if technically they can persist, economically they will gradually lose relevance. The core of private stock token issuance is essentially building a side pool outside the massive liquidity of traditional exchanges.

Therefore, NYSE’s move signals not “full prosperity of stock tokenization,” but a very real signal: stock tokenization is shifting from “multiple experiments in parallel” to “highly centralized and standardized.”

In this landscape, opportunities no longer belong to projects issuing more tokens, but to those that can seamlessly connect to the official stock token system and build user entry points and trading experiences around it.

This is the real industry change after NYSE’s move.

4. Every upgrade of the stock’s underlying infrastructure causes a paradigm shift in brokerages

Looking back over the past 100 years of stock trading, a clear pattern emerges: each paradigm shift in trading has given rise to a new breed of brokerages.

The first major shift was before the 1970s. At that time, stock trading relied entirely on paper certificates and manual intermediaries; ordinary people could hardly participate. The stock market was essentially an elite game. This is the scene often seen in old movies: brokers shouting prices in trading halls to match orders.

The second shift occurred after the 1970s. With the establishment of DTC, stock trading began to be handled centrally by large investment banks and brokerage systems. Institutions like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch started executing trades and clearing for clients. This era is depicted in “The Wolf of Wall Street”: stock trading remained professional but was opened to a broader client base via phone.

The third shift emerged after the 2000s. The proliferation of internet and API-based trading radically lowered participation barriers. Online brokerages like Interactive Brokers, Robinhood rose, making stock trading truly mass-market. History repeatedly proves: when a trading model undergoes a systemic change, the brokerage ecosystem is inevitably reshaped. We believe that by around 2026, stock tokenization will become an irreversible trend. As settlement and delivery gradually move onto blockchain infrastructure, the entire stock trading system will face a new wave of restructuring.

This NYSE-led upgrade in stock infrastructure and stablecoin settlement systems is precisely a paradigm shift.

Our company, Stablestock, and others are gradually betting on the “crypto-native brokerage” direction in 25H2—essentially betting on the continued global penetration of stablecoins. Stablecoins will, for the first time, enable a huge, long-excluded population to participate in global stock trading with lower barriers and less friction. We believe this is the next-generation reshaping of brokerage.

5. Stablestock’s 1-2 year roadmap

We plan to focus the next 12–24 months on building a more crypto-friendly, on-chain native next-generation brokerage— a neobroker.

Imagine a future: within the same broker app, users can not only settle with stablecoins but also:

• High leverage spot trading (launching June)
• Perpetual contracts (H1 launch)
• Options (September launch)
• Cross-margin system combining crypto assets + stocks
• Prediction markets and simpler binary options
• IPO (March launch)
• Hong Kong stock trading (March launch)
• Stock lending
• Sub-second deposit and withdrawal settlement

All built on a unified, crypto-friendly broker platform.

Additionally, as this foundation matures, we will release comprehensive developer documentation to empower independent developers to build their own applications based on StableBroker, such as:

• Lending markets
• AI Trading
• Wealth management vaults
• Follow Trading
• Onchain ETF
• Stock token-backed stablecoins
• And more innovative StockFi products

Looking ahead, building a complete, mature stock tokenization brokerage infrastructure remains a long-term journey.

6. Final words

NYSE’s move will indeed impact some crypto-native stock token projects. The previous model relying on “private issuance” and “undeveloped rules” will face higher standards, stricter comparisons, and increased marginalization. But this does not mean a systemic negative.

On the contrary, it’s more like a structural reshuffle driven by industry maturation.

Once stock tokenization is integrated into more complete clearing systems and official frameworks, the real beneficiaries will not be projects issuing more assets, but those building the infrastructure around trading, settlement, and capital flow. Stablecoins will become a more important capital entry point; contracts and derivatives will have clearer, more trustworthy underlying assets; crypto-friendly brokerages will become key bridges connecting traditional securities systems with the on-chain world.

Competition will intensify, but that doesn’t mean innovation will cease. Instead, the focus of innovation will shift: from “how to issue assets” to “how to use assets more efficiently”; from superficial on-chainization to solving real user friction in depositing, trading, settling, and holding.

If past stock tokenization was an experiment exploring boundaries, then after NYSE’s move, the industry is entering a new phase—more defined rules, more professional participants, and innovations more aligned with real financial needs. For projects that truly understand both finance and crypto, this is not the end but a new beginning.