Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)
Last night, a blockbuster news directly ignited the cryptocurrency market — NYSE officially announced the launch of a tokenized securities trading and on-chain settlement platform supporting 24/7 trading.
- Odaily Note: For details, please refer to "NYSE Plans to Launch 24/7 Tokenized Stock Trading, 'Competitors' Are Stunned".
In short, NYSE's on-chain stock tokenization solution mainly includes the following three aspects:
- This is a tokenized securities trading and on-chain settlement platform, planning to support 24/7 trading of U.S. stocks and ETF funds, fractional share trading, stablecoin-based fund settlement, instant settlement, and will combine NYSE's existing matching engine with a blockchain settlement system.
- According to NYSE's plan, tokenized stocks will have the same dividends and governance rights as traditional securities.
- NYSE's parent company ICE is also collaborating with banking giants like BNY Mellon and Citigroup to explore tokenized deposits and clearing infrastructure to support cross-time zone, round-the-clock fund and margin management.
Although many key design details of this platform are still unknown, based on the currently available information, we can preliminarily speculate on the market impact of this change — especially after NYSE, as a正规军 (regular army), enters the field, which crypto businesses will directly benefit or suffer.
Beneficial Business Speculations
Speculation 1: U.S. Compliant Stablecoins (e.g., USDC)
NYSE explicitly mentioned in the announcement that it would introduce "stablecoin-based fund settlement." This will directly introduce a top-tier new application scenario for stablecoins, promoting the adoption growth of stablecoins in the stock market — the world's largest and most mainstream asset trading market by volume — and stimulating the issuance and trading demand for stablecoins.
However, it is important to note that, as a compliant platform, NYSE will inevitably only choose U.S. compliant stablecoins under the GENIUS regulatory framework. Although it is temporarily uncertain which stablecoin NYSE will adopt, Circle, currently the leader in the U.S. compliant system, is most likely to be selected.
Speculation 2: Tokenized Stock Contract Trading Platforms (e.g., Hyperliquid)
This speculation is based on the premise that NYSE's tokenized stock trading platform will not support leveraged trading — at least it is not mentioned in the current announcement.
The demand for leverage in the market always exists. If NYSE does not provide leverage services, some with higher risk appetite will still choose to trade on tokenized stock contract platforms that support leverage.
Previously, a major problem faced by such platforms was that while they naturally support 24/7 trading, the stock market still follows traditional trading hours, resulting in mismatched hedging windows, which objectively limited market makers' entry and liquidity accumulation — once NYSE's tokenized stock trading platform supports 24/7 trading, this problem will be solved.
Speculation 3: Basis Trading Protocols (e.g., Ethena)
Tokenized stocks, as a new asset class, will expand the choice of underlying assets for basis trading protocols like Ethena.
The biggest difficulty such protocols faced before was — the market lacked top-tier assets with sufficient liquidity and solid consensus. For example, Ethena, having only BTC, ETH, and SOL, already felt like it was hitting a bottleneck. NYSE's entry is expected to introduce more top-tier assets into the cryptocurrency market. Coupled with derivative trading services based on these assets, it will unlock more arbitrage opportunities.
Speculation 4: Selected Infrastructure (e.g., Public Chains, Oracles, etc.)
Introducing stocks onto the chain in tokenized form for trading will inevitably rely on infrastructure such as public chains (underlying networks) and oracles (price feed services). But who gets a piece of this pie highly depends on whose services NYSE chooses.
In this regard, compared to the first-mover advantage in the native cryptocurrency market, resource capabilities面向 (oriented towards) the traditional financial world may be more important.
Adversely Affected Business Speculations
Speculation 1: Tokenized Stock Issuance Platforms
Most native tokenized stock issuance platforms in the current cryptocurrency industry use a mapping mechanism, which always carries certain security risks and profit distribution issues.
NYSE's entry will not only directly bring tokenized stocks with more solid backing but has also明确 (explicitly) stated that "tokenized stocks will have the same dividends and governance rights as traditional securities". The latter will directly deliver a降维打击 (dimensionality reduction strike) to some native tokenized stock issuance platforms in the industry.
Speculation 2: Tokenized Stock Spot Trading Platforms
There's not much to say about this; it's about directly competing with the正规军 (regular army) in the core scenario.
However, such tokenized stock spot trading platforms are not without ways to break through. Feasible solutions include but are not limited to: promoting offshore strategies, extending services to groups not covered by NYSE's tokenized stock platform; introducing contract trading services......
The Change Has Come, Opportunities Remain
Overall, NYSE's launch of a 24/7 tokenized stock trading and on-chain settlement platform will indeed directly impact some native cryptocurrency businesses, but this does not mean that the event constitutes a systemic negative for the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. The key is to distinguish between "what is being replaced" and "what remains."
From a business perspective, NYSE is clearly trying to bring the "tokenized stock trading"蛋糕 (cake) back inside the traditional financial system. This undoubtedly means competition is intensifying, and some narratives will be severely compressed. But at the same time, the capabilities that the cryptocurrency industry is truly good at and that are difficult for traditional finance to fully replicate in the short term will be further amplified — including the stablecoin system required for round-the-clock settlement, contract trading centered around high volatility and leverage demand, and on-chain financial engineering capabilities represented by basis trading and structured strategies.
The arrival of change is a既定事实 (fait accompli). Competition will indeed intensify, but opportunities also exist.
