The following is a guest post and opinion from Jamie Elkaleh, CMO at Bitget

In Hong Kong, hours before the New York open, an investor buys a $1 slice of Tesla directly from a self-custody wallet. No broker, no FX spreads, no trading window. Thanks to tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs offered through Ondo Global Markets and integrated into wallets like Bitget, Wall Street is quietly becoming a 24/7, on-chain market.

Within a few years, wallets—not brokers—will be the default portal to U.S. equities for non-U.S. investors.

From Synthetic Failures to Real Backing

Tokenizing real-world assets (RWAs)—securities, funds, and bonds represented digitally on a blockchain—has been discussed for over a decade. Early attempts included synthetic models where tokens tracked stock prices via oracles but conferred no ownership rights (like Synthetix and Mirror), CFDs (contracts for difference) where brokers issued exposure contracts, and fully backed tokenized securities that represented claims on real shares held with a regulated custodian under bankruptcy-remote structures (meaning assets remain safe even if the issuer goes bankrupt).

But fully backed securities are where progress is accelerating. Galaxy Digital became the first U.S.-listed company to tokenize its own common stock in August 2025, using Superstate and Solana. Nasdaq has since filed a proposal with the SEC to enable trading of tokenized securities on its main market by 2026. Kraken launched “xStocks,” offering tokenized Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, and 50+ others backed one-to-one by shares held with Backed Finance. Robinhood entered Europe with 200+ tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs—though its tokens are contracts, not shares, raising issuer concerns.

The Stablecoin Precedent

Stablecoins showed how quickly traditional assets could migrate on-chain. By exporting

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Author: Jamie Elkaleh