Conan (Trump's only dog, tail number XBQt) community: Stocks are beginning to truly go on-chain $BTC $SOL $ETH

In March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved Nasdaq's push for a higher profile: from "stocks on-chain" to RWA: Wall Street is rewriting the underlying logic of assets and modifying securities trading rules to allow qualified stocks and ETFs to be traded and settled in tokenized form within traditional trading systems. In May, NYSE Texas, a subsidiary of the New York Stock Exchange, also submitted and took effect with similar rule modifications, allowing tokenized securities to be traded during the DTC pilot program. Meanwhile, the parent company of the NYSE, Intercontinental Exchange, announced it is developing a new tokenized securities platform, aiming for 24-hour trading, instant settlement, dollar-denominated orders, and stablecoin fund access.
This means that RWA, Real World Assets, which is the on-chain representation of real-world assets, is no longer just a concept experiment in the crypto finance circle but is beginning to enter the core infrastructure of mainstream U.S. capital markets.
In recent years, when the market talks about RWA, it is mostly thinking of digitized real estate, bonds, gold, private equity, accounts receivable, and other assets. The basic logic is to map real-world asset rights into digital tokens on the blockchain, thereby enhancing liquidity, transparency, and divisibility. But Nasdaq and NYSE's latest moves elevate this logic to a higher level: not only can non-standard assets go on-chain, but even the most liquid, highly regulated, and well-established market infrastructure in the U.S.—stocks—are beginning to enter tokenization pilot programs.
The significance behind this is profound. Stocks are among the most standardized and electronic assets in the modern financial system. If even stocks need to be further "on-chain," it indicates that the value of blockchain is not just about turning paper assets into electronic assets but about reshaping the entire financial infrastructure for trading, clearing, settlement, registration, custody, and corporate actions.
The design approved for Nasdaq is not about creating a separate, unregulated "on-chain casino," but about embedding blockchain technology within the existing national market system. Tokenized stocks will use the same order books, trading codes, and CUSIP identifiers as traditional stocks, and will enjoy the same dividends, voting rights, and corporate actions. In other words, what’s on the chain are not "shadow stocks," but digital rights that are equivalent, equal, and similarly regulated as traditional securities. SEC documents also clarify that related transactions will still be cleared and settled through the DTC system, with Nasdaq’s matching, routing, market data, risk control, and regulatory monitoring mechanisms remaining largely unchanged.
This is precisely the core direction of RWA: not to replace regulation with "de-regulation," but to use new technology to enhance the efficiency, transparency, and verifiability of the existing financial system.
A key role is played by DTC. DTC is the core depository and settlement infrastructure of the U.S. securities market. Its parent company, DTCC, announced in May 2026 that over 50 traditional and digital financial institutions are participating in its tokenization working group, planning to launch tokenized securities trading in a limited production environment in July 2026, and officially launching services in October. DTC’s tokenization services cover assets including Russell 1000 component stocks, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. DTCC also disclosed that DTC’s current custody assets exceed $114 trillion.
These figures show that Wall Street is not working on a fringe product but is attempting to upgrade the "back-end system" of the world’s largest securities market into a programmable, traceable, cross-chain interoperable new financial infrastructure.
From a market efficiency perspective, the most immediate potential of "stocks on-chain" is to shorten clearing and settlement cycles. Although traditional securities markets are already highly electronic, trading, clearing, settlement, custody, and registration are still distributed across multiple systems, leading to time lags, reconciliation costs, and capital lock-up. If tokenized securities can achieve near real-time settlement in the future, counterparty risk can be reduced, margin requirements lowered, and capital efficiency improved. This is especially important for cross-border investors, as cross-border securities transactions often involve foreign exchange, custody, time zone, and multi-layer intermediary issues.
From an asset management perspective, tokenized securities can also turn dividend distribution, voting rights exercise, fund redemption, and collateral management into programmable processes. In the future, investors may hold not just a string of security codes in their accounts but a digital financial right that can automatically receive dividends, participate in corporate actions, meet compliance restrictions, and be used for collateralized financing.
In terms of financial competition, Nasdaq and NYSE’s actions also show that traditional exchanges no longer see blockchain as an external challenge but are actively adopting it. Previously, many believed that crypto exchanges would "disrupt" traditional exchanges; now, a more likely path is that traditional exchanges, central securities depositories, clearinghouses, custodians, brokerages, and compliant digital asset platforms will collaboratively transform market infrastructure. The main battlefield of RWA is shifting from "wild growth on-chain" to "infrastructure upgrades within regulatory frameworks."
This also offers important insights for Mainland China and Hong Kong markets. In recent years, Hong Kong has actively promoted virtual assets, stablecoins, tokenized funds, and green bonds tokenization, aiming to build a compliant hub connecting traditional finance and on-chain finance. If the U.S. stock market begins accepting tokenized trading and settlement, the competition among global financial centers will no longer be just about listing resources, trading volume, and regulation but also about "who can establish a trusted, compliant, scalable on-chain financial infrastructure first."
For Chinese assets, the significance of RWA is even more special. China possesses a large amount of high-quality but illiquid industrial assets, infrastructure assets, green assets, tech innovation assets, and supply chain assets. Historically, these assets have been difficult for global investors to understand, price, and trade. In the future, if rights confirmation, valuation, information disclosure, cash flow distribution, and cross-border circulation can be completed under compliance, Chinese assets could transform from "offline assets" into "globally allocatable assets." This is not just about innovative financing tools but about reconstructing the international expression of Chinese assets.
Of course, "stocks on-chain" does not mean the risks disappear. Tokenized securities still involve issues such as investor suitability, custody security, on-chain identity verification, cybersecurity, smart contract vulnerabilities, market manipulation, and cross-border regulatory coordination. The importance of this U.S. pilot lies precisely in the fact that it does not abandon the existing securities law framework but advances technological upgrades within DTC, exchanges, and SEC regulatory rules. This also reminds us that truly resilient RWA is not just "issuing tokens for assets," but a systemic overhaul of assets, law, regulation, technology, and market infrastructure.
The Nasdaq and NYSE "stocks on-chain" pilot may just be the beginning. Over the next decade, the global financial market might undergo a profound transformation from "account-based finance" to "on-chain asset finance." Those who can understand this change first will be able to take the lead in the next-generation financial infrastructure. The era of RWA has moved from concept to reality. #比特币ETF单日净流出7272枚 #Gate携手Alpaca链接数字资产与股票金融交易