The Convergence of Blockchain and Stocks: How Asset Tokenization is Reshaping Global Finance

By Changan, Amelia | Biteye Research

Why Blockchain Stocks Are Becoming Institutional Consensus in 2025

Over the past year, a striking market phenomenon has emerged: as US stocks and precious metals reach new highs powered by AI and productivity gains, the crypto market faces repeated liquidity crises. Many investors joked that “the endgame of crypto is the US stock market,” considering switching out entirely.

Yet what if these two seemingly divergent wealth paths are converging through blockchain technology? Why would BlackRock, Coinbase, and other institutional giants unanimously embrace asset tokenization in their 2025 outlook? The answer reveals something profound: this is not merely about moving stocks onto the blockchain—it’s a fundamental restructuring of financial infrastructure.

Blockchain stocks represent the conversion of equities (Apple, Tesla, Nvidia) into blockchain-native tokens, typically pegged 1:1 to underlying shares and traded through decentralized systems. Token holders gain economic rights (price exposure, dividends) while maintaining full programmability across DeFi protocols.

The Core Innovation: Why Blockchain Transforms Stock Markets

Traditional securities markets operate under constraints that blockchain eliminates:

24/7 Continuous Trading Stock exchanges close during non-trading hours, but blockchain operates perpetually. This breaks the artificial scarcity of trading windows, allowing global participation without geographical or temporal friction.

Fractional Ownership and Democratized Access Traditional brokers require minimum purchases of 100 shares, but blockchain stocks fragment into micro-units. An investor with $10 can now access fractional shares of world-class companies. This fundamentally democratizes wealth participation across the globe.

Seamless DeFi Integration Once converted to blockchain tokens, stocks become composable assets. They can serve as collateral for loans, participate as liquidity providers in yield protocols, or be leveraged for advanced trading strategies—none of which are feasible with traditional equities.

Global Liquidity Convergence Traditional markets create liquidity silos: US stock liquidity, crypto liquidity, and commodity liquidity operate in separate ecosystems. Blockchain stocks merge these pools, enabling crypto capital to directly access high-quality real-world assets without friction. This represents a quantum leap in capital efficiency.

As Larry Fink noted, the next generation of markets will be tokenized securities. This addresses a chronic crypto market weakness: when stocks and precious metals outperform, capital drains from crypto. But if tokenized stocks bring institutional-grade assets into the blockchain ecosystem, capital remains circulating within the industry, significantly improving long-term resilience.

How Blockchain Stocks Actually Work: Two Competing Models

The blockchain stock ecosystem currently splits into two architectures:

Model 1: Custodial-Backed Tokens (Mainstream) Real shares sit in regulated custodian vaults (traditional brokers, trust companies). Corresponding tokens are minted on-chain, representing economic claims on these underlying assets. Users hold blockchain-based claims against real physical stocks.

This model dominates 2025’s regulatory environment because it inherits traditional market compliance. Security and redemption depend entirely on custodian reliability—which creates concentration risk but ensures regulatory legitimacy.

Model 2: Synthetic Derivatives (Fading) Synthetic protocols (like earlier Mirror structures) use price oracles to track stock movements without holding real shares. Tokens represent price exposure only, functioning like perpetual contracts. These are financial derivatives, not asset ownership.

Synthetic models face existential challenges: no real asset backing, poor regulatory standing, and inherent design flaws have pushed them to the industry margins. As institutional capital flows in, custody-based models have become definitively dominant.

The Implementation Challenge: Where Friction Still Exists

Blockchain stocks are not frictionless. Several real constraints remain:

Custody and Operational Risk Shares concentrate in few regulated custodians. Custodian bankruptcy, operational errors, or liquidation delays could theoretically impact token redemption. This creates single-points-of-failure despite distributed blockchain infrastructure—a fundamental paradox.

Non-Trading Hour Price Instability When US markets close, on-chain prices decouple from real market reference points. Liquidity thins, and prices become entirely driven by internal crypto market sentiment. Large traders can move prices with leverage, triggering cascading liquidations—similar to pre-market manipulation events in traditional markets.

Batch Settlement Delays Platforms execute trades through traditional market sessions, meaning minting/redemption requests face brief processing delays outside market hours. Large orders enjoy traditional market liquidity (<0.2% slippage), but settlement remains bound to legacy market cycles.

Regulatory Compliance Overhead Unlike native crypto assets, blockchain stocks face stringent securities regulations across multiple jurisdictions. Custody structures, compliance frameworks, and licensing requirements slow rollout. This sector cannot replicate DeFi’s viral growth—every feature requires legal architecture.

The Disruption to Speculative Assets When institutional-quality stocks trade natively on blockchain, narrative-driven altcoins without real cash flows face existential pressure. Investors increasingly recognize the trade-off between “speculation and volatility” versus “real-world fundamentals.” This is healthy for ecosystem maturity but devastating for sentiment-dependent tokens.

The Active Platform Ecosystem: Who’s Leading

Ondo Finance The largest tokenized securities platform by TVL (exceeding $1 billion by year-end 2025), Ondo offers 100+ tokenized stocks and ETFs supporting 24/7 trading and DeFi collateral integration. Expanded across Ethereum, BNB Chain, with Solana launches planned early 2026. Institutional backing from Alpaca and Chainlink partnerships transformed TVL from hundreds of millions to $1B+ within a single year. Integration into major wallet interfaces significantly expanded user accessibility.

Robinhood Blockchain Division Traditional brokerage giant Robinhood launched tokenized stocks on Arbitrum for EU markets (200+ stocks, commission-free, 24/7). Stock perps follow traditional market hours currently. Company plans proprietary “Robinhood Chain” deployment. Equity surged 220%+ YTD—a remarkable return driven by prediction markets, crypto expansion, and blockchain integration.

xStocks / Backed Finance Swiss-regulated issuer providing 1:1 custody of 60+ tokenized stocks. Trades primarily on decentralized and centralized platforms. Emphasizes EU compliance and institutional-grade liquidity. Early funding, no 2025 public raises, yet trading volume exceeded $300M with strong partner expansion to Solana, BNB Chain, Tron.

StableStock Crypto-native neobroker enabling stablecoin-based access to real stocks without traditional banking. Launched StableBroker beta August 2025, partnered for BNB Chain tokenized stocks October 2025. Now supports 300+ US stocks/ETFs with daily trading approaching $1M volume. Building a stablecoin-centered global trading infrastructure.

Aster (Perpetual Contracts Focus) Multi-chain perpetual DEX (BNB Chain, Solana, Ethereum) offering stock perps (AAPL, TSLA, etc.) with up to 100x leverage. Post-September 2025 TGE, trading volume exceeded $500B annually, TVL surpassed $400M, user base reached 2M+. Positioned as institutional-grade perps infrastructure.

Trade.xyz Pre-IPO tokenization platform (SpaceX, OpenAI) using SPV custody. Early-stage with testnet launch in 2025, integrating perpetual contracts via ecosystem partnerships. Emphasizes low entry barriers and illiquid asset exposure.

Ventuals Hyperliquid-native pre-IPO perpetual contracts (not real ownership, price exposure). Built on HIP-3 standard. Backed by Paradigm. Rapid deployment in 2025 with multi-market launch, positioning as major player in pre-IPO derivatives.

Jarsy Compliance-focused private share tokenization (SpaceX, Anthropic, Stripe) on 1:1 basis. $5M pre-seed June 2025 (Breyer Capital led). Emphasizes proof-of-reserve and on-chain transparency. TVL growing with dividend mechanics planned.

Industry Consensus vs. Contrarian Views

The Bullish Case Leading analysts view tokenized stocks as infrastructure, not speculation. The technology enables “digital migration” of assets—just as the internet dismantled information silos, blockchain eliminates settlement costs, breaks geographic barriers, and decentralizes intermediaries. This is not explosive growth but resilient, long-term infrastructure evolution.

The Skeptical View Some argue tokenized stocks are an existential threat to altcoins. When institutional-quality assets compete natively for capital, purely speculative tokens face irrelevance. The ecosystem bifurcates into “real assets” (stocks, commodities) and “pure crypto” (altcoins)—a challenging rebalancing for sentiment-dependent projects.

The Integration Vision The emerging consensus: blockchain stocks represent crypto’s maturation. The industry transitions from “alternative finance” to “twin financial system” operating parallel to traditional markets. This increases regulatory scrutiny but attracts institutional capital at scale.

The Larger Implication: Financial System Evolution

Blockchain stocks signal a fundamental shift in financial architecture. For centuries, equity markets operated under geographic, temporal, and institutional constraints. Tokenization dissolves these boundaries:

• Information barriers collapse (like early internet)
• Participation becomes truly global (24/7, $10 minimum)
• Assets become composable code (DeFi integration, programmability)
• Intermediaries reduce (self-custody, transparent protocols)

This is not simply “stocks moved onto blockchain.” It’s the structural reimagining of how assets flow, settle, and accrue value across global markets.

In 2025, this migration has just begun. 2026 will see accelerated adoption as regulatory frameworks solidify and institutional deployment scales. The convergence of blockchain and stocks—once a curious phenomenon—is becoming the foundational infrastructure of next-generation finance.

The question is no longer whether tokenized stocks will exist, but how quickly traditional markets will integrate them as core rails.

(This analysis is for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. Cryptocurrency and blockchain assets carry significant risk. Participate with appropriate due diligence.)