Wallets, not brokers: How tokenized stocks are putting wall street on a 24/7 clock
The following is a visitor submit and opinion from Jamie Elkaleh, CMO at Bitget
In Hong Kong, hours earlier than the New York open, an investor buys a $1 slice of Tesla immediately from a self-custody pockets. No dealer, no FX spreads, no buying and selling window. Thanks to tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs supplied by way of Ondo Global Markets and built-in into wallets like Bitget, Wall Street is quietly changing into a 24/7, on-chain market.
Within a few years, wallets—not brokers—would be the default portal to U.S. equities for non-U.S. buyers.
From Synthetic Failures to Real Backing
Tokenizing real-world belongings (RWAs)—securities, funds, and bonds represented digitally on a blockchain—has been mentioned for over a decade. Early makes an attempt included artificial fashions the place tokens tracked inventory costs by way of oracles however conferred no possession rights (like Synthetix and Mirror), CFDs (contracts for distinction) the place brokers issued publicity contracts, and absolutely backed tokenized securities that represented claims on actual shares held with a regulated custodian below bankruptcy-remote buildings (which means belongings stay protected even when the issuer goes bankrupt).
But absolutely backed securities are the place progress is accelerating. Galaxy Digital turned the primary U.S.-listed firm to tokenize its personal frequent inventory in August 2025, utilizing Superstate and Solana. Nasdaq has since filed a proposal with the SEC to allow buying and selling of tokenized securities on its essential market by 2026. Kraken launched “xStocks,” providing tokenized Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and 50+ others backed one-to-one by shares held with Backed Finance. Robinhood entered Europe with 200+ tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs—although its tokens are contracts, not shares, elevating issuer considerations.
The Stablecoin Precedent
Stablecoins confirmed how shortly conventional belongings may migrate on-chain. By exporting the U.S. greenback to blockchains, stablecoins grew into a $160 billion+ market and have become the reserve foreign money of crypto, powering remittances, funds, and DeFi lending.
The parallels to equities are clear. Just as stablecoins prolonged greenback liquidity worldwide, tokenized equities may prolong Wall Street’s attain. Instead of solely holding {dollars} in wallets, customers could quickly maintain fractional shares of Apple, Tesla, or the Nasdaq index—belongings priced in {dollars} however tradable 24/7, exterior U.S. buying and selling hours.
RWA markets already mirror this pattern, with tokenized Treasuries and cash equivalents topping $7.4 billion, and general RWA provide on-chain surpassing $25 billion in 2025, up from simply $100 million 5 years in the past.
Wallets as Financial Gateways
For a long time, entry to U.S. markets required intermediaries like brokers, financial institution accounts, and jurisdictional approval. Today, the entry level is a crypto pockets.
Wallets are evolving into monetary gateways, combining funds, financial savings, and investments. A employee in Lagos or Manila can obtain a stablecoin remittance, pay payments, and allocate leftover funds into tokenized S&P 500 shares—all inside the identical app.
Bitget Wallet’s integration with Ondo Finance is one instance. Users can entry 100+ tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, settled on-chain. The UX mirrors cellular cash’s leapfrogging of conventional banking in Africa and Asia. Wallets may now leapfrog brokers, bringing low-barrier entry to capital markets.
Liquidity, Regulation, and the Roadblocks Remaining
Liquidity has lengthy been the breaking level for tokenized belongings. Early experiments failed much less from lack of curiosity than from shallow buying and selling depth. New fashions search to resolve this by linking on-chain tokens on to conventional market liquidity. Whether that scales stays unsure.
Regulation is equally unresolved. Access in the present day is generally restricted to non-U.S. customers and sometimes requires KYC or eligibility checks. Investors ought to verify how dividends, splits, and voting rights are dealt with, and which custodian safeguards the underlying shares.
Tokenized belongings nonetheless face structural frictions like custodial centralization, whitelisting necessities, valuation opacity, and restricted decentralized venues. Tokenized stocks whole simply a $420 million market cap in the present day—a fraction of the broader $28 billion RWA market, reflecting how early the sector stays.
Three Takeaways
The transformation boils down to a few key shifts.
Tokenized equities are creating always-on entry to Wall Street, extending conventional markets into a 24/7 buying and selling atmosphere.
We’re witnessing the rise of wallet-first investing, the place wallets are evolving into the default gateway that seamlessly combines funds, financial savings, and fairness investments in a single interface.
Compliance will decide scale—the pace of adoption in the end relies upon on how shortly regulators make clear eligibility necessities, custodianship requirements, and voting rights for tokenized securities.
The Next Layer of Finance
Finance is shifting towards a sooner, borderless mannequin. Stablecoins proved it with {dollars}; tokenized securities are now testing it with stocks.
The endgame could also be easy: a paycheck arrives as stablecoins, a portion auto-swaps into a tokenized S&P 500 index, and all the things sits in a pockets—{dollars}, equities, and crypto—coexisting in the identical digital atmosphere.
Wall Street received’t disappear, however its clock is being reset. The opening bell is giving strategy to a 24/7 on-chain economic system.
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