After the AUM of the US stock token rToken exceeded 100 million USD, what should we focus on in the next phase?
Gracy: The US stock token rToken was launched in early June, and within about a month, the AUM exceeded 100 million USD. As of July 6, the AUM reached 114 million USD, with a cumulative trading volume of 670 million USD, growing faster than we expected, which also validates the real demand from crypto users for traditional financial assets like US stocks.
This demand is reflected not only in the size of holdings but also in trading activity. During the weekend amid the changing situation in the Middle East and the US stock market closure, rToken's weekend trading volume reached ten times that of the previous week, growing about 2.2 times compared to the average level in June weekends. We are seeing more and more users beginning to view rToken as a tool for allocating global assets during market fluctuations, rather than just long-term holding. Although the absolute trading volume of US stock tokens during the weekend is still in its early stages, the market volatility has highlighted the importance of 24/7 trading.
However, the AUM exceeding 100 million USD at least verifies that users are indeed willing to trade such assets. For us, this is just the first step. The next and more important aspect is what practical uses can be provided to users after the assets are launched. Since proposing the concept of the Universal Exchange (UEX) last September, we have progressively covered US stocks, foreign exchange, commodities, and Pre-IPO products. Now, most core asset categories are in place, and we believe that simply increasing the number of assets in the future will struggle to create long-term differentiation.
The focus of the next stage is to truly integrate different assets into a unified account to enhance capital efficiency. For example, rToken can act as unified collateral, where different assets share funds and support cross-asset strategies, lending, APIs, and quantitative trading, etc. In terms of unified accounts and institutional products, Bitget is indeed one to two years behind some of the leading platforms. What we need to make up for is not just an account function but also building a complete product capability around professional traders and institutional users. Institutions are more concerned with whether they can manage stocks and crypto assets in the same account, share margin, and efficiently allocate funds across different markets. The next phase requires “not just a unified account,” but rather a “cross-asset unified account,” which is also the key direction we are focusing on. The indicators we will pay attention to will not only be AUM and trading volume but will also include trading friction, capital utilization, and cross-product experience.
Will there be consideration for launching Korean, Japanese, Hong Kong, and A-shares in the future?
Gracy: There is indeed user demand, but we will be more cautious regarding stock markets outside the US at this stage. The core reason is regulation and product feasibility. The platform has already covered ten Hong Kong stock-related targets through perpetual contracts, including AI concept stocks like Zhihui AI, but this does not mean a complete spot or tokenized stock product for Hong Kong stocks has been established.
In most regions outside the US, there is still no sufficiently clear or mature regulatory framework for RWA and stock tokenization. At the same time, the global stock market capitalization and liquidity remain highly concentrated in US stocks, making the US market more suitable for prioritizing asset supply, institutional participation, and liquidity. The regulatory sensitivity of A-shares and Hong Kong stocks is especially high. Regulators typically do not want local stocks to be traded overseas or on crypto platforms after being repackaged, as this also involves investor protection, market regulation, and cross-border capital flow.
Therefore, whether other countries and regions' stocks are launched depends not only on whether there is user demand but also on whether local regulations are clear and whether the platform can find a compliant product structure. For example, many users comment in my Twitter section requesting the platform to list a particular stock. However, user "ordering" does not mean the "chef" can immediately provide it. We will certainly consider these demands, but ultimately it still requires a comprehensive evaluation of regulation, product feasibility, and market maturity.
The three main types of users of the US stock token rToken and what they trade
Cat Brother: The AUM of rToken has exceeded 100 million USD. What types of users are currently using it? What are the differences in demand among different users?
Gracy: Currently, they can be roughly categorized into three types: crypto-native users, cross-asset traders, and institutional and professional traders.
The first type is crypto-native users. They originally hold stablecoins like USDT and USDC, are accustomed to using crypto platforms, and wish to gain direct exposure to US stock prices without reopening accounts, conducting fiat deposits or withdrawals, or cross-platform transfers. These users are most concerned about trading hours, liquidity, slippage, and whether corporate actions can be accurately processed. Whether assets are "on-chain" is not the most important; the key is whether they are truly tradable.
The second type is cross-asset traders. They hold Bitcoin, Ethereum, US stocks, and ETFs, wishing to reduce account switching and manage various assets within the same capital framework. These users are more concerned with whether the connection between tokenized assets and the real securities market is stable, including if pricing closely follows the underlying stock, whether order execution is near traditional brokers, and whether prices significantly deviate during extreme market conditions.
The third type is institutional and professional traders. They care not about manually buying and selling individual stocks but whether rToken can integrate with existing APIs, quantitative trading, and risk management systems, and be used for unified margin, lending, and cross-asset hedging. For instance, an institution may wish to simultaneously hold rToken and crypto contracts, allowing different positions to share margin. At this point, interface stability, trade latency, liquidation rules, and liquidity management are more important than the number of assets covered.
All three types of users will pay attention to price, liquidity, and trading experience, but their focus differs: crypto-native users value the convenience of stablecoins and crypto accounts; cross-asset traders emphasize execution quality close to traditional brokers; and institutions pay more attention to APIs, margin, lending, and risk control.
How should ordinary users understand the US stock token rToken? How is it different from other stock tokenization products?
Gracy: rToken is a tokenized asset issued by Reality, a licensed RWA protocol launched by Bitget, currently supporting over 500 mainstream US stocks and ETFs, and may extend to other asset types in the future. Compared to other stock tokenization products on the market, we have mainly improved on liquidity, dividend distribution, and capital efficiency.
Bitget began supporting US stock tokens issued by other RWA issuers as early as last autumn. We found that the most frequently mentioned issue by users was actually liquidity; typically, orders of a few hundred dollars could be executed with controllable slippage, but larger orders might fail to execute or experience excessive slippage. Therefore, rToken initially planned to introduce liquidity from NASDAQ and NYSE; as far as we know, few platforms can do this currently. We have conducted some internal comparisons, and regarding order depth, rToken is 50-100 times ahead of similar products, as it is hard to find markets with stronger liquidity than NASDAQ and NYSE.
Another common user feedback issue is related to dividends, payouts, stock splits, and other corporate actions. In this regard, rToken is closer to the presentation style of traditional brokers. If the underlying stock distributes cash dividends, users will receive net dividends settled in USDT; if it is stock dividends or splits, the number and cost of rTokens held by the user will be adjusted accordingly.
Some other tokenized stock products may keep cash dividends within the underlying asset pool and reflect them in the token's net value through reinvestment or buybacks. This model may not reduce the user's economic returns, but it may cause the token price to gradually deviate from the stock price displayed by traditional market software. For example, if a stock price is 200 USD and generates a cash dividend of 2 USD per share, rToken will separately handle stock positions and cash returns, allowing the user to continue holding the corresponding asset while receiving the equivalent of 2 USD in USDT. Another type of product might continue to allocate this 2 USD into the asset pool, increasing the net value of the token.
The economic outcomes of different models may be similar, but the user experience differs. rToken emphasizes keeping the price, position, and return structure as consistent with traditional securities accounts as possible, reducing the cognitive load for ordinary users. Thus, we still hope to align closely with traditional brokers, and the differences between rToken and other products lie not merely in whether the underlying has real asset support but also in how corporate actions like dividends, splits, and consolidations are presented.
Furthermore, because Reality has a deep collaboration with the Bitget platform, we can integrate rToken into various ecosystems of the Bitget exchange, such as using rToken as collateral in a cross-asset unified account, allowing users to open BTC contracts without selling it after buying NVIDIA stock. We have also seen some strategies, like using the Bitget lending feature to lend out Apple's stock tokens. If the dividends can cover the borrowing cost, it might theoretically create some arbitrage opportunities. Endowing stock tokens with the flexibility and utility of crypto assets will unlock more possibilities for user operations and significantly improve capital efficiency. These are also challenges many other US stock tokens currently struggle to achieve.
As a contract margin, is the US stock token rToken still primarily used by institutions and professional traders?
Gracy: This question should start with our cross-asset unified account. Simply put, it allows one rToken to serve three purposes: earning interest, acting as margin, and being used for collateralized lending.
For most ordinary users, the simplest is the first: earning interest. Buying and holding rToken can provide users with price exposure and related rights to the corresponding US stocks, offering an experience more akin to buying the stock itself.
The latter two methods of utilization—acting as margin and collateralized lending—are more advanced strategies, more suitable for institutions and professional users with risk management capabilities.
For example, if you use rNVDA as margin to open a BTC contract. Ideally, if NVIDIA's price is stable and the BTC direction is also right, it effectively means enhancing capital efficiency and gaining incremental收益 without needing to sell the stock. However, if NVIDIA declines and the contract incurs a loss, the collateral depreciation and position loss will occur simultaneously, leading to a quicker onset of liquidation risk.
Regarding collateralized lending, users can use rToken as collateral to obtain liquidity in stablecoins. Different assets will have varying limits and risk control requirements. For large-cap names like Apple, an individual user's collateral limit is around 1.2 million USD, while smaller-cap assets like SanDisk (SNDK) may only allow 80,000 USD. The more obscure, volatile, and less liquid the asset, the more cautious the limits generally are.
How do US stock orders ultimately enter the real market?
Gracy: To achieve rToken's liquidity linked directly to NASDAQ and NYSE, we have established technical links among the following three parties:
- Trading platform: Bitget
- Issuer: Reality
- Partner Broker: Alpaca
For instance, after a user submits a buy order for rToken, the order will be sent to Alpaca, which will connect it to the US securities market for execution. Then, the underlying broker and clearing system will complete the securities settlement, holding the stock within a custodial institution; at the same time, the system will generate rTokens according to the corresponding quantity and credit them to the user's account. Therefore, each newly generated rToken theoretically corresponds to an equivalent quantity or value of underlying securities for support. What the user sees is one token, but it still relies on brokers, exchanges, clearing agencies, and custodial systems to handle real securities transactions behind the scenes.
The sell process is quite the opposite. After a user sells rToken, the corresponding tokens are canceled, the underlying service entity sells the corresponding stocks, completes the settlement, and then returns to the user’s account in stablecoins or a supported settlement asset. Thus, rToken does not operate independently from the traditional financial system but connects a front-end crypto account and token form with the underlying traditional securities market. The user experience can closely resemble crypto spot trading, but it still relies on actual securities trading, clearing, and custodial systems.
How does rToken maintain trading after the US stock market closes?
Cat Brother: rToken aims to provide longer trading hours, but the US stock market itself is not open all day. During the time the underlying market is closed, how does the platform maintain liquidity and price stability?
Gracy: Extending trading hours means users need not be fully restricted by US stock market hours, and the market can respond to sudden events more promptly. However, after the US stock market closes, the primary source of liquidity for rToken will temporarily disappear. Currently, trading during the closure is mainly undertaken by market makers. Partner market makers will stock up on shares before the US stock market closes, and user transactions of rToken over the weekend mainly rely on this inventory for matching.
However, this does not mean that trading during the closure will have the same market depth as during normal trading hours. During significant events, market makers need to assess risk without main market prices, often reducing orders and widening bid-ask spreads. While they can partially hedge using overnight market quotes like Blue Ocean, the liquidity in these markets is far less than during normal trading, and they cannot fully replace NASDAQ and NYSE.
Therefore, prices during the market closure reflect more the quotes formed by market makers based on inventory and their risk tolerance, rather than the market prices resulting from sufficient trading. Users need to accept the risks of decreased liquidity, increased slippage, and the possibility that transaction prices may deviate from the next normal trading session's opening prices. Longer trading hours address the question of "whether trading can occur," rather than "whether it can always trade with normal market depth."
In the event of trading halts, circuit breakers, or significant events, how does rToken price and settle?
Gracy: First, we need to distinguish between two issues: how stock tokens are priced and whether the unified account will trigger liquidation. During the US stock market closure, if users use rToken as margin, the platform will adopt the index price at the close of the last trading day to value it, in order to avoid the distortion of margin value from sporadic transaction prices during periods of missing continuous quotes in the underlying market. However, this is merely a temporary freeze of the valuation benchmark and does not mean the risk disappears. If a significant event occurs over the weekend, the stock may still open significantly gapped on the next trading day.
At the same time, other assets within the unified account will continue to fluctuate normally. For example, if users use rToken as margin to hold a crypto contract, even if rToken is momentarily valued at the last trading day's price, if other positions drive the overall risk rate of the account to reach liquidation levels, forced liquidation will still trigger. The unified account always conducts risk control based on the collateral, liabilities, and unrealized gains and losses of the entire account, not just a single collateral assessment.
If the underlying stock is suspended, experiences a circuit breaker, or a significant event occurs that prevents reliable quotes, the platform will implement temporary risk control measures according to the nature of the events, the length of suspension, and market liquidity, such as adjusting collateral rates, limiting new margin contributions, restricting trading, or suspending related products, rather than adopting fixed rules. For instance, if there is a long-term suspension and risk vividly increases, the platform might preemptively lower the collateral value; if it's simply a short-lived circuit breaker, it typically waits until the underlying market resumes trading to update prices. Hence, suspensions or market closings do not mean risks are paused. Thus, when using rToken as margin, in addition to price fluctuations, users need to pay attention to risks like gaps, suspensions, liquidity reductions, and platform adjustments to risk control parameters.
Why is the stock asset reserve rate exactly 100%? Can rToken redeem underlying stocks?
Cat Brother: Reality has maintained a stock asset reserve rate of nearly 100%. Why does it not retain a certain proportion of excess reserves like cryptocurrencies?
Gracy: The stock asset portion adopts a one-to-one matching structure. For every rToken issued by Reality, a corresponding quantity or value of stock is held by Alpaca, and there is no additional purchase of stock inventory beyond the token issuance demand.
Therefore, as long as the token supply corresponds entirely to the underlying holdings, the reserve rate naturally remains 100%. To increase this ratio above 100%, Bitget, Reality, or other participants would need to invest additional funds to purchase a batch of stocks that do not correspond to existing user holdings. From our perspective, the necessity for this approach is not high at this stage.
At the same time, rToken is currently the only RWA asset on the market capable of providing daily third-party PoR audit results. Other RWA issuers may disclose reserves but more often take a self-reported format, which carries the risk of "being both referee and player." Reality currently collaborates with the American auditing institution The Network Film to provide daily PoR data; The Network Film is a familiar name to crypto enterprises, having conducted asset audits for compliant exchanges like Kraken and Gemini.
Cat Brother: Stock investors sometimes plan to hold for over ten years or even longer. For users who intend to hold rToken long-term, what exit methods are currently available? Can they redeem for underlying stocks or transfer assets to other brokers?
Gracy: Currently, the main exit method for rToken is still to sell in the market and exchange for USDT. As for whether rToken can directly be redeemed for underlying stocks in the future, or transferred to other brokers like traditional securities accounts, there is no definitive plan yet.
Returning to UEX from rToken: Why are exchanges starting to compete for cross-asset entry points?
Cat Brother: If we view rToken not just as a standalone product but rather within Bitget's overall strategy, what does it mean?
Gracy: From a broader perspective, rToken is not just a US stock product; it is also testing whether this UEX path can be established. Current data at least indicates that trading traditional financial assets through crypto platforms is not a demand created by the platforms. Many users are genuinely concerned not about "stock tokenization" but whether they can trade globally recognized assets more conveniently.
Based on current data, this demand is also quite concentrated. Approximately 23.51% of rToken's TVL comes from SpaceX; the combined share of NVIDIA, Micron, and other AI industry chain assets accounts for around 45%. If SpaceX is further included, the proportion of growth assets like AI and technological infrastructure has exceeded 70%. We see that when the crypto market lacks new high-growth targets, some funds naturally shift towards assets like AI, semiconductors, and commercial aerospace. Therefore, the exchanges expanding their US stock business is not merely to increase the variety of trading products but to respond to the user demand for cross-asset allocation.
Bitget has accumulated capabilities in trading systems, liquidity management, and risk control, and now needs to validate whether these capabilities can be migrated to larger markets such as stocks, ETFs, foreign exchange, and commodities. However, traditional finance has mature brokerage, clearing, custodial, and regulatory systems. What we need to continuously prove is not just whether we can put assets into an app, but whether we can handle issues like taxes, corporate actions, asset isolation, and cross-border compliance in the long term.
This is also why we value UEX. It is not just a pure growth narrative but answers what value exchanges can still provide in the next phase. If businesses remain long-term focused on crypto assets, eventually all platforms will only compete over transaction fees and listing speeds. Cross-asset platforms provide another possibility, allowing users to manage different assets in the same account instead of constantly moving funds with market changes. However, asset coverage is just the first step. The real challenge lies in enabling unified accounts, cross-asset margins, lending, yield products, and APIs to allow different assets to truly share funds and trading capabilities. For us, whether UEX can truly be established ultimately depends on whether these underlying capabilities can be executed well.
I do not believe Bitget has become a leader yet. Having launched US stock products earlier and covered more does not mean a long-term advantage has been established. The product launch is merely the first step. What truly matters is whether users are willing to use it long-term, whether institutions continue to expand trading scale, and whether the product can withstand extreme market conditions and regulatory changes.
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