The Liquidity Dilemma and Breakthrough Path of US Stock Tokenization

Recently, the cryptocurrency industry has sparked a wave of "US stocks on-chain". Several platforms have successively launched tokenized versions of US stocks and ETF trading services, and even introduced high-leverage contract products for these tokens.

Most of these platforms adopt a "real stock custody + token mapping" model, allowing users to trade U.S. stock assets on the blockchain. Theoretically, users only need a crypto wallet to trade stocks like Tesla and Apple at any time, without having to open an account with traditional brokers or meet capital thresholds.

However, with the rollout of related products, issues such as pinning, premium, and decoupling have frequently emerged, and the underlying liquidity problems have quickly come to the surface. Although users can purchase these tokens, it is almost impossible to efficiently short-sell or hedge risks, making it even more difficult to construct complex trading strategies.

The current tokenization of US stocks is essentially still in the initial stage of "only being able to buy on the rise."

1. The Liquidity Dilemma of US Stock Tokenization

To understand the liquidity dilemma of the recent "U.S. stock tokenization" craze, it is first necessary to analyze the underlying design logic of the current "real stock custody + mapping issuance" model.

This model is currently mainly divided into two paths, with the core difference being whether or not it has the qualification for compliance in issuance:

1. The "third-party compliant issuance + multi-platform access" model represented by certain platforms achieves a 1:1 peg to real stocks through collaboration with traditional financial institutions.

2. Licensed broker self-operated closed loop, relying on its own broker license to complete the entire process from stock purchase to on-chain token issuance.

The common point of the two paths is that they both regard US stock tokens as pure spot holding assets, and the only thing users can do is buy and hold in anticipation of price increases, which turns them into "sleeping assets". This lack of scalable financial functionality makes it difficult to support an active on-chain trading ecosystem.

Since each Token must be backed by an actual stock, on-chain transactions only transfer the ownership of the token and cannot affect the spot price of US stocks, which naturally leads to the "two-tier" issue between on-chain and off-chain. Without large-scale buying and selling funds, this can cause significant deviations in on-chain prices.

Secondly, the asset functionality of current US stock assets has been severely curtailed. Even though some platforms attempt to distribute dividends in the form of airdrops, most platforms have not opened voting rights and re-staking channels. Essentially, they are merely "on-chain holding certificates" rather than actual trading assets, lacking "margin attributes."

After users buy the relevant Token, it can neither be used for collateralized lending nor be used as margin to trade other assets, making it even harder to access other DeFi protocols to further obtain Liquidity, resulting in an asset utilization rate close to zero.

Objectively speaking, the current "tokenization of US stocks" has only moved the price onto the blockchain, remaining at the initial stage of digital certificates, and has not yet become a true "financial asset that can be traded" to release liquidity. Therefore, it is difficult to attract a broader range of professional traders and high-frequency funds.

2. Exploration of Liquidity Solutions

In order to deepen the on-chain liquidity of US stock tokens, provide holders with more practical application scenarios and holding value, and attract more professional capital to enter the market, several solutions are currently being discussed:

1. Incentivize Liquidity Pool

This model attempts to attract funds by issuing platform tokens and rewarding users who provide liquidity for trading pairs through subsidies. However, this model has a fatal flaw: the incentives rely on token inflation, making it impossible to form a sustainable trading ecosystem. Once the incentive strength diminishes, funds will quickly withdraw, leading to a cliff-like drop in liquidity.

2. Market makers dominate liquidity

This model attempts to exploit on-chain and off-chain arbitrage through compliant channels. Market makers can mitigate the price difference when the on-chain Token price deviates from the spot price by "redeeming Token → selling stocks" or "buying stocks → minting Token". However, the implementation cost of this logic is extremely high, as the complexity of compliance processes, cross-market settlement, and asset custody often leads to the arbitrage window being consumed by time costs.

3. High-speed off-chain matching + on-chain mapping

This model completes the core transaction process through a centralized engine, only recording the results on-chain, which theoretically can connect to the depth of the US stock spot market. However, this model has high technical and procedural thresholds, and the traditional US stock trading hours need to match the 7×24 hour trading attributes of the blockchain.

These three liquidity solutions each have their merits, but they all assume that external forces "inject" liquidity instead of allowing the US stock tokens themselves to "generate" liquidity. Relying solely on on-chain-off-chain arbitrage or incentive subsidies makes it difficult to fill the continuously growing liquidity gap.

3. Make US Stock Tokens "Living Assets"

In the traditional U.S. stock market, the abundance of Liquidity is not rooted in the spot itself, but rather in the trading depth constructed by derivatives systems such as options and futures. These tools support the three core mechanisms of price discovery, risk management, and capital leverage.

However, the current market for tokenization of US stocks is precisely lacking this structural layer. For US stock tokens to break through the predicament, the accumulated tokens must become "collateralizable, tradable, and combinable living assets".

If users can short BTC with certain US stock tokens and bet on ETH trends with other tokens, then these idle assets will no longer be just "token shells," but rather margin assets that are actively utilized, and liquidity will naturally grow from these real trading demands.

Some platforms have begun to explore this path. For example, a certain platform has launched an index trading pair of Tesla stock Token and Bitcoin on a specific blockchain in collaboration with another protocol. The core mechanism is to allow US stock Tokens to truly become "margin assets available for trading" through "coin-based perpetual options."

This mechanism allows users to use specific US stock tokens as collateral to participate in BTC/ETH perpetual options trading. It is reported that there are plans to expand support for over 200 tokenized US stocks as collateral assets in the future, enabling users holding small-cap US stock tokens to use them as margin to bet on the rise and fall of BTC/ETH, thereby injecting real trading demand.

When users can use various US stock tokens as collateral to participate in perpetual options strategies for BTC and ETH, trading demand will naturally attract market makers, high-frequency traders, and arbitrageurs, forming a positive cycle of "active trading → depth improvement → more users."

This mechanism is not only a trading structure but also inherently possesses the market-making ability to activate the value of US stock tokens, especially in the early stage where a deep market has not yet formed, and can be directly used as an OTC market-making and liquidity guidance tool.

Under this mechanism, US stock tokens are no longer isolated assets, but have truly integrated into the on-chain trading ecosystem, being reused, and completing the entire path of "asset issuance → liquidity construction → derivative trading closed loop."

Conclusion

This round of tokenization in the U.S. stock market means that the initial question of "whether it can be issued" has been completely resolved. However, the competition in the new cycle has actually shifted to the stage of "whether it can be used effectively": how to create real trading demand? How to attract strategy building and fund reuse? How to make U.S. stock assets truly come alive on the blockchain?

This no longer relies on more brokers entering the market, but rather on the improvement of on-chain product structures. Only when users can freely go long or short, build risk portfolios, and combine cross-asset positions, can "tokenization of U.S. stocks" possess complete financial vitality.

The essence of liquidity is not the accumulation of funds, but the matching of demand. When it becomes possible on-chain to freely achieve "hedging Bitcoin volatility with Tesla options," the liquidity dilemma of tokenization in the US stock market may finally be resolved.