The tokenization of US stocks from the perspective of "conspiracy theories": a mild global "dollar harvesting"?

Author: Tyler

Have you ever traded US stocks on-chain?

Waking up to find that Kraken has launched xStocks, supporting the trading of 60 US stock tokens; Bybit quickly followed suit by listing popular stock token pairs like AAPL, TSLA, and NVDA; Robinhood also announced it will support US stock trading on the blockchain and plans to launch its own public chain.

Whether the wave of tokenization is just old wine in new bottles, US stocks have indeed become the "new favorite" on-chain overnight.

However, upon closer inspection, this new narrative woven by USD stablecoins, US stock tokenization, and on-chain infrastructure seems to be plunging Crypto deep into financial narratives and geopolitical games, inevitably sliding into new role positioning.

US Stock Tokenization Is Not a New Concept

US stock tokenization is not a new concept.

In the last cycle, representative projects like Synthetix and Mirror had already explored a complete set of on-chain synthetic asset mechanisms. This model not only allows users to mint and trade "US stock tokens" like TSLA and AAPL through over-collateralization (such as SNX and UST), but it can also cover fiat currencies, indices, gold, and crude oil, almost encompassing all tradable assets.

The reason lies in the synthetic asset model, which tracks the underlying assets and uses over-collateralization to mint synthetic asset tokens: for example, with a collateralization rate of 500%, it means that users can stake $500 worth of crypto assets (like SNX or UST) into the system, thereby minting synthetic assets (like mTSLA or sAAPL) pegged to the asset price and trading them.

Since the entire operating mechanism uses oracle pricing + on-chain contract matching, all transactions are completed by the internal logic of the protocol, with no real trading counterparties, which theoretically provides a core advantage: the ability to achieve infinite depth and a no-slippage liquidity experience.

So why is this synthetic asset model moving towards large-scale adoption?

Ultimately, price pegging ≠ asset ownership. The US stocks minted and traded under the synthetic asset model do not represent real ownership of the stocks in reality; they are merely "betting" on prices. Once the oracle fails or collateral assets collapse (as Mirror did during the UST crash), the entire system faces risks of liquidation imbalance, price decoupling, and user confidence collapse.

At the same time, an easily overlooked long-term factor is that US stock tokens under the synthetic asset model are destined to be a niche market in Crypto------funds only circulate within the on-chain closed loop, with no institutions or brokers involved, meaning it will always remain at the "shadow asset" level, unable to integrate into the traditional financial system, establish real asset access and funding channels, and few are willing to launch derivative products based on this, making it difficult to leverage structural inflows of incremental funds.

Therefore, although they once thrived, they ultimately failed to take off.

New Structure for US Stock Fund Flow

This time, US stock tokenization has adopted a new approach.

Taking the US stock token trading products launched by Kraken, Bybit, and Robinhood as examples, from the disclosed information, it is not price pegging or on-chain simulation, but actual stock custody, with funds flowing into US stocks via brokers.

Objectively speaking, under this model of US stock tokenization, any user only needs to download a crypto wallet and hold stablecoins to easily buy US stock assets on DEX, bypassing account opening thresholds and identity checks anytime, anywhere. There are no US stock accounts, no time zone differences, and no identity restrictions throughout the entire process; funds can be directly directed into US stocks on-chain.

From a micro perspective, this allows global users to buy and sell US stocks more freely, but from a macro perspective, this is actually the US dollar and US capital markets leveraging Crypto as a low-cost, high-flexibility, 24/7 pipeline to attract global incremental funds------after all, under this structure, users can only go long, cannot short, and there are no leverage or non-linear return structures (at least for now).

Imagine a scenario where a non-Crypto user in Brazil or Argentina suddenly discovers they can buy US stock tokens on-chain or on CEX. They only need to download a wallet/exchange, convert local assets to USDC, and with just a few clicks, they can buy AAPL or NVDA.

It sounds good to simplify the user experience, but in reality, it is a "low-risk, high-certainty" fund flow structure for global capital, allowing hot money from Crypto users worldwide to flow into the US asset pool with unprecedented low friction and cross-border access, enabling people around the world to buy US stocks anytime, anywhere.

Especially as more and more L2s, exchanges, wallets, and other native infrastructures connect to these "US stock trading modules," the relationship between Crypto and the US dollar and Nasdaq will become more obscure and more solid.

From this perspective, a series of "new/old" narratives surrounding Crypto are being designed into a distributed financial infrastructure specifically for US financial services:

• US Treasury stablecoins → Global currency liquidity pool
• US stock tokenization → Traffic entry for Nasdaq
• On-chain trading infrastructure → Global transit hub for US brokers

This may be a flexible siphoning method for global funds, and regardless of whether it sounds conspiratorial, at least Trump or the next US decision-makers may fall in love with this new narrative of "US stock tokenization."

How to View the Pros and Cons of "US Stock Tokenization"?

If viewed purely from the perspective of the Crypto circle, does US stock tokenization have any appeal, or what impact might it have on the on-chain cycle?

I believe it needs to be viewed dialectically.

For users lacking access to US stock investment channels, especially retail investors in the Crypto native community and third-world countries, US stock tokenization equals an unprecedented low-threshold pathway, qualifying as "asset equality" that crosses barriers.

After all, as a super market that has seen the emergence of star stocks like Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia, the "historic long bull" of US stocks has always been a topic of discussion in the investment community, making it one of the most attractive asset classes globally. However, for the vast majority of ordinary investors, the barriers to participating in trading and sharing dividends have always been relatively high: account opening, fund transfers, KYC, regulatory restrictions, trading time differences… various barriers have deterred countless people.

Now, as long as you have a wallet and a few stablecoins, even in Latin America, Southeast Asia, or Africa, you can buy Apple, Nvidia, or Tesla anytime, anywhere, realizing the democratization of dollar assets among global users. In short, for those in underdeveloped regions where local assets cannot outperform US stocks or even inflation, US stock tokenization undoubtedly provides unprecedented accessibility.

In contrast, within the Crypto circle, especially among trading users represented by the Chinese-speaking community, the overlap with the US stock investment circle is quite high. Most people already have US stock accounts and can access the global financial system with a single click through banks and brokers like Interactive Brokers (my personal daily use is a combination of SafePal/Fiat24 + Interactive Brokers).

For these users, US stock tokenization seems a bit half-baked------they can only go long, there are no derivative products available, and even basic options and margin trading are absent, which is hardly trading-friendly.

As for whether US stock tokenization will further siphon off the crypto market, don’t be too quick to dismiss it. I think this might be a new opportunity window for "asset Lego" after the DeFi ecosystem clears out low-quality assets.

After all, one of the biggest problems with current on-chain DeFi is the severe lack of quality assets. Aside from BTC, ETH, and stablecoins, there are not many assets with real value consensus, and many altcoins are of questionable quality and highly volatile.

If in the future these actual stock custody and on-chain issued US stock tokens can gradually penetrate into DEX, lending protocols, on-chain options, and derivatives systems, they could completely become new foundational assets, supplementing on-chain asset portfolios and providing DeFi with more certain value materials and narrative space.

Moreover, the current US stock tokenization products are essentially spot custody + price mapping, lacking leverage and non-linear return structures, and naturally lack deep financial tool support. It depends on who can first create highly combinable and liquid products, who can provide an integrated on-chain experience of "spot + shorting + leverage + hedging."

For example, as high-credit collateral in lending protocols, constructing new hedging targets in options protocols, or forming combinable asset baskets in stablecoin protocols. From this perspective, whoever can first create an integrated on-chain trading experience of spot + shorting + leverage + hedging is likely to build the next on-chain Robinhood or on-chain Interactive Brokers.

For DeFi, this may be the real turning point.

It remains to be seen who can reap the benefits of on-chain products from this new narrative.

In Conclusion

Starting from 2024, the question of whether "Crypto can still revolutionize TradFi" will no longer be a topic worth discussing.

Especially this year, penetrating traditional financial channels through stablecoins, bypassing sovereign barriers, tax obstacles, and identity checks, ultimately establishing a new dollar channel with Crypto, has become a core storyline of many narratives recently led by compliant USD stablecoins.

Crypto bless America may not just be a joke.