With the NYSE finally exiting the market, is this the end of stock tokenization or a golden age for crypto-friendly brokerages?

Moments ago, the NYSE announced the upcoming launch of a 24/7 on-chain stock trading platform. In essence, US equities will soon be tradable on-chain around the clock.

NYSE will launch tokenized stock trading platform

Many people’s first reaction is: “This is great! Stocks are finally going fully on-chain!” “Does this mean anyone can issue stock tokens now?”

But if you take a closer look, you’ll reach a counterintuitive conclusion:

NYSE’s entry doesn’t make stock tokenization more open.

Instead, it signals the likely end of the era where private companies could freely issue stock tokens.

1. In Plain English: What Is “Stock Tokenization”?

Let’s skip the technical jargon and use a clear analogy.

• Stocks: You own a “share” of a company through a broker.
• Tokenization: Using broker infrastructure, users or institutions mint those “shares” as tokens on the blockchain.

It sounds appealing, right? Stablestock had similar ideas earlier this year: Could Stablestock follow the stablecoin model and tokenize stocks using broker-based infrastructure?

Could stocks then trade freely on-chain? That’s where the complications begin. The process involves significant compliance and technical challenges.

For example, on the compliance side, if you don’t operate a brokerage, you lack custody over user assets, and users can’t transfer stocks into your brokerage—so they can only buy from scratch. On the technical side, consider stock splits and reverse splits: once tokens are issued, and the underlying stock undergoes such events (which happen frequently), smart contracts struggle to process these changes. If the oracle malfunctions, users in perp/lending products could face liquidation.

In our months exploring stock tokenization, we’ve encountered numerous technical challenges beyond these, leading us to realize that the true foundation for stock tokenization is DTCC or Nasdaq/NYSE—not the issuing company. If NYSE/Nasdaq/DTCC don’t address these core issues, the stock tokenization sector could fail before it matures.

2. Why Can Private Companies Issue Stablecoins, But Not Stock Tokens?

Unlike stablecoins, stock tokens aren’t something private companies can issue at will. Stablecoins work because “the US dollar is freely circulating.” Stock tokens don’t, because “stocks aren’t truly held by brokers or companies.”

Stablecoins are pegged to the dollar—a freely circulating asset. With a bank account, you can receive, pay, and transfer funds. Issuing stablecoins is essentially “redemption”: the user gives you $1, you issue 1 stablecoin on-chain; they can redeem 1 stablecoin for $1 anytime. As long as reserves are real and redemption is reliable, the model works. Dollars don’t involve dividends, voting, or ownership registration, making the technical and legal structure relatively simple.

Stocks are fundamentally different. They aren’t stored at a single broker; final registration and custody are centralized in systems like DTCC. When you buy stocks, you become a shareholder—not the holder of a freely transferable asset. Stock transfers require clearing, reconciliation, and updated registration—far more complex than a simple transfer.

More importantly, stocks generate continuous events during holding: dividends, voting, splits, additional issuance, and more. Each event must be legally valid and accurately reflected in the shareholder registry. Issuing stock tokens means taking responsibility for the entire lifecycle, not just the initial issuance.

Let’s use transfers and splits as examples.

For dollar transfers, a bank account is enough because the banking system handles inflows and outflows; there’s no need to notify anyone or update an “ownership register.” Stocks, however, aren’t “money”—they have a complex legal and ownership structure. Stocks aren’t actually stored at brokers. Many people think their stocks are held by the broker app they use, but that’s not the case. Final registration and custody are centralized at DTCC (see flow chart below). Shareholder lists, splits, and voting all follow DTCC records. Unlike money, transferring stocks means ownership changes, requiring updates to shareholder lists, dividend rights, and voting rights. This isn’t as simple as a bank transfer; brokers must reconcile, clearing systems must confirm, and central custodians must register the changes. Stocks have never been a freely circulating asset. Their business logic is fundamentally different from stablecoins.

Broker asset flow and custody

Asset behavior differs as well. Dollars can sit idle, but stocks generate dividends, voting, splits, mergers, and additional issuance. Take stock splits: Netflix announced a 1-for-10 split on November 17. Suppose a stock token issuer holds 1,000 shares of NFLX at a broker (registered at DTCC), and there are 1,000 NFLX tokens circulating on-chain before the split. When the 1-for-10 split occurs, the broker’s shares automatically increase from 1,000 to 10,000—no action required, as clearing and custody systems handle it. But on-chain, things get tricky. You could forcibly mint 9,000 new NFLX tokens, so each token holder gets 10 tokens. But who executes this? Who ensures every address is handled correctly? What if tokens are in DeFi, lending, or AMMs? How do you split tokens locked in smart contracts? Who guarantees the oracle updates prices promptly? If you don’t split tokens but only adjust exchange ratios, pricing can become chaotic, with discrepancies between on-chain and off-chain prices. Every corporate action requires rule changes. These events are frequent and complex.

Netflix 1-for-10 split on November 17

From these examples, it’s clear that for transfers and splits, the most critical infrastructure is DTCC and NYSE/Nasdaq—not the stock token issuer.

3. NYSE’s Entry Changes the Rules

With NYSE’s official entry into stock tokenization, the industry’s focus fundamentally shifts—it’s not just another “participant.”

Early on, stock tokenization relied on private projects: issuers mapped stock value to tokens, aiming to solve trading hours, cross-border, and efficiency issues. But this model depended on the absence of a widely accepted, authoritative “official version.”

NYSE’s entry changes everything.

Once stock tokenization is backed by top exchanges, clearing systems, and regulatory frameworks, most clearinghouses, brokers, and users will connect directly to the official system rather than use privately issued stock tokens. The reason is simple—official solutions offer more complete foundational capabilities.

Official stock tokens connect directly to mature clearing and custody systems, natively supporting splits, mergers, dividends, voting, M&A, and additional issuance—areas where private issuers have long struggled. For institutions, comprehensive functionality and clear legal responsibility matter far more than “on-chain nativity.”

Crucially, official endorsement attracts liquidity. As clearinghouses, market makers, banks, and institutions provide services around official tokens, privately issued stock tokens will inevitably face liquidity shortages, discounted pricing, and high trust costs. Even if they persist technically, their economic relevance will fade. Private company-issued stock tokens essentially create peripheral pools outside the traditional exchange’s massive liquidity.

So, NYSE’s entry isn’t about “universal stock tokenization prosperity.” It’s a clear signal:

Stock tokenization is moving from “parallel experiments” to “high concentration and standardization.”

In this new landscape, opportunities belong not to projects issuing more tokens, but to those integrating seamlessly with the official stock token system and building user access and trading experiences.

This is the real industry transformation sparked by NYSE’s entry.

4. Every Major Stock Infrastructure Upgrade Has Triggered a Paradigm Shift for Brokers

Looking back over the past century of stock trading, a clear pattern emerges: each shift in trading paradigms creates new broker models.

The first major shift happened before the 1970s, when stock trading relied on paper certificates and manual intermediaries. Ordinary investors were excluded; the market was an elite game. This is the classic scene in old movies—trading floors where brokers match orders by shouting.

The second shift came after the 1970s, with the establishment of DTC. Stock trading became centralized among large investment banks and brokerages. Firms like Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch handled trades and clearing for clients. This is the era depicted in “The Wolf of Wall Street”: trading remained professional but became accessible to more clients by phone.

The third shift arrived after 2000, with the rise of the internet and API-driven trading. Online brokers like Interactive Brokers and Robinhood made stock trading accessible to the masses. History shows that when trading models change systemically, the broker ecosystem is inevitably reshaped. We believe that by 2026, stock tokenization will be an irreversible trend. As settlement and delivery move to blockchain infrastructure, the entire trading system faces a new restructuring window.

This stock tokenization upgrade led by NYSE, along with stablecoin settlement systems, marks a paradigm shift.

Companies like Stablestock are betting on “crypto-native brokers” in 2H25, essentially wagering on stablecoins’ continued global penetration. Stablecoins will allow a vast population long excluded from traditional finance to participate in global stock trading with lower barriers and less friction. This is the next evolution of brokerage.

5. Stablestock’s 1–2 Year Roadmap

Over the next 12–24 months, our core focus will be building a next-generation, crypto-friendly neobroker with native on-chain capabilities.

Imagine a future where, in one broker app, users can settle with stablecoins and also:

• High-leverage spot trading (June launch)
• Perpetual contracts (H1 launch)
• Options (September launch)
• Combined crypto asset + stock cross-margin system
• Prediction markets and simple binary options
• IPO access (March launch)
• Hong Kong stock trading (March launch)
• Stock lending
• Instant deposit/withdrawal settlement

All of this is built on a unified crypto-friendly broker platform.

As this foundation matures, we’ll release comprehensive developer documentation to empower independent developers to build their own apps on StableBroker, including:

• Lending markets
• AI trading
• Wealth management vaults
• Copy trading
• On-chain ETFs
• Stock-token backed stablecoins
• And more innovative StockFi products

Looking ahead, building a mature stock tokenization broker infrastructure will be a long journey.

6. Final Thoughts

NYSE’s entry will impact some crypto-native stock token projects. Models relying on “private issuance” and “unformed rules” will face higher standards, stricter comparisons, and greater risk of marginalization. But this isn’t a systemic negative for the sector.

On the contrary, it’s an industry-wide reshuffling driven by maturity.

As stock tokenization integrates with robust clearing systems and official frameworks, the real beneficiaries will be those building infrastructure for trading, settlement, and capital flow—not those issuing more assets. Stablecoins will become a more important capital gateway; derivatives will gain clearer, more reliable underlying assets; and crypto-friendly brokers will bridge traditional securities with the on-chain world.

Competition will intensify, but innovation won’t disappear. Instead, innovation will become more pragmatic—shifting from “how to issue assets” to “how to use assets more efficiently”; from focusing on on-chain formality to solving real user friction in deposits, trading, settlement, and custody.

If past stock tokenization was about exploring boundaries, NYSE’s entry marks a new era: clearer rules, more professional participants, and innovation closer to real financial needs. For projects that truly understand both financial and crypto logic, this is not the end—it’s a new beginning.

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