Written by: Nancy

From an initial attempt with less than $100 million to a scale exceeding $4 billion, tokenized stocks have completed the transition from proof of concept to mainstream penetration in just over a year.

Behind the exponential growth of the market, there are not only native crypto players entering but also traditional financial giants diving into the "deep waters" with core assets.

SEC Officially Approves, Nasdaq Gets Approval to Pilot Tokenized Stocks

After six months of multiple revisions and public consultations, the SEC officially approved the rule modifications submitted by Nasdaq on March 18, allowing securities to be traded in tokenized form on its exchange. This means that mainstream US stock exchanges have officially started pilots for tokenized securities trading.

The executing party for this tokenized trading pilot is DTC (Depository Trust Company), a subsidiary of DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation). The SEC has approved DTC to provide custody asset tokenization services, allowing it to offer tokenization services for participants and their clients for three years on a pre-approved blockchain, covering highly liquid assets including the Russell 1000 Index, ETFs tracking major indices, and US Treasury bonds.

SEC documents emphasize that tokenized securities are not new products and will be fully incorporated into the existing securities law regulatory framework, maintaining all the rights of traditional securities such as equity ownership, dividend rights, and voting rights. Furthermore, the trading system, market structure, fee structure, and regulatory oversight remain unchanged, with the only change being the settlement method. In other words, the original institutional logic of the exchange remains the same, but the underlying settlement link has introduced blockchain technology as an alternative path.

According to Nasdaq's plan, the current pilot trading of tokenized stocks is limited to qualified DTC participants and qualified securities, allowing simultaneous traditional or tokenized forms of trading. Transactions that meet the qualifications and choose tokenized settlement will be executed by DTC (for selecting blockchain, wallet addresses, etc.). If participants are unqualified, assets do not meet the criteria, or technology is unsupported, settlement will default to traditional methods.

Tokenized stocks and traditional orders will share the same order book, with consistent queuing priority, trading matching mechanisms, and price discovery models. Traders can choose "whether to enable tokenized settlement" when placing orders, thus avoiding issues such as liquidity dispersion and fragmented trading.

However, the first batch of pilot targets is limited, mainly including components of the Russell 1000 index, ETFs tracking major benchmarks such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indices. From the selection logic, these are all high liquidity, high market value, and mature regulatory structure asset classes, not small or low liquidity assets.

Moreover, Nasdaq has made it clear that tokenized trading based on the DTC pilot is not the only model. There may be or will be multiple tokenization methods on the market, and if other models are adopted in the future, they will be submitted separately for SEC approval.

In fact, apart from this pilot focusing more on trading and settlement aspects of tokenization, Nasdaq is also simultaneously advancing plans for issuers.

Recently, Nasdaq announced a partnership with Kraken's parent company, Payward, to jointly develop plans to offer tokenized stocks and exchange-traded products (ETP) on its exchange. The two parties plan to build a conversion system named "Stock Transformation Gateway" that allows tokenized stocks to flow freely between regulated traditional stock markets and unlicensed blockchain networks, using the same CUSIP codes to ensure interchangeability, with settlements still conducted through DTCC. This plan is pending final approval from the SEC and is expected to be officially launched in the first half of 2027.

With Nasdaq taking the lead, the pool of tokenized stocks is rapidly expanding. In addition, the traditional financial giant NYSE is also following suit, revealing that it is developing a tokenized trading platform, while its parent company ICE has recently announced an investment in OKX to accelerate related layouts.

S&P 500 First Time on the Chain, Hyperliquid Obtains Official Authorization

Around the same time, another tokenized experiment is unfolding in the on-chain market.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has announced that it has authorized the S&P 500 Index to Trade XYZ for the launch of the first and only officially authorized S&P 500 perpetual derivatives contract on Hyperliquid.

This product is aimed at qualified non-US investors, supports on-chain leveraged long and short trading, directly utilizing institutional-grade S&P DJI index data. S&P states that this move will extend the liquidity ecosystem of the S&P 500 to the on-chain realm, enabling 24-hour trading, complementing existing futures, options, ETFs, and other on-exchange and off-exchange products.

As one of the most important stock indices globally, the S&P 500 Index tracks the 500 largest and most representative companies listed on major exchanges in the United States, with related derivatives (futures, options, ETFs, etc.) having daily trading volumes exceeding $1 trillion. It is not only a "barometer" of the US economy but also a core tool for global investors to allocate dollar-denominated assets and participate in US growth.

This "on-chain" move means that this nearly 70-year-old index will achieve round-the-clock trading for the first time. Furthermore, unlike the Nasdaq route, the S&P 500 index entering the on-chain perpetual market directly skips the traditional exchange system, also seen as an important step for the on-chain migration of global assets.

In fact, S&P Global has been accelerating its crypto initiatives in recent years, including launching crypto indices, publishing DeFi indices, rating stablecoins and tokenized treasury funds, launching crypto ecosystem indices, and collaborating with blockchain projects to promote tokenized funds.

Trade XYZ is the largest RWA perpetual market on Hyperliquid, with contracts for traditional assets such as crude oil attracting attention from Wall Street funds. Since its inception in October 2025, this market has exceeded $10 billion in transaction volume, with annual trading sizes over $600 billion. For Hyperliquid, with the introduction of the S&P 500, it gains not only liquidity expansion but, more importantly, brand endorsement, potentially attracting more TradFi products to the chain in the future.

Currently, Trade.xyz has deployed the S&P500/USDC trading pair on the Hyperliquid platform through the HIP-3 protocol, supporting leverage up to 50 times. As of the time of writing, the cumulative trading volume of this asset has exceeded $39 million, with the open interest rapidly climbing to $24 million.

From Nasdaq to Hyperliquid, tokenization is advancing along two routes. One focuses on traditional finance, introducing blockchain into existing markets, reconstructing clearing and settlement processes; the other directly rebuilds the trading system on-chain, mapping traditional assets into crypto derivatives that can be traded continuously.

However, one clear trend is that global financial assets are accelerating their migration onto the chain.

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