Wall Street’s biggest exchanges are embracing digital assets with the goal of putting the $126 trillion stock market on blockchains, but they’re not doing it alone; rather, they rely on crypto exchanges to get there.
Over the past week, two of the world’s most powerful stock operators, Nasdaq and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, have partnered with digital asset exchanges to merge stocks with blockchains through tokenization.
Nasdaq is developing a framework that would allow publicly traded companies to issue blockchain-based versions of their shares while preserving traditional ownership rights and governance. To distribute those tokenized shares globally, the exchange is working with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken. The offering could go live as early as the first half of 2027.
Meanwhile, just days earlier, ICE revealed a strategic investment in crypto exchange OKX at a valuation of $25 billion. That deal includes plans to launch new tokenized stocks and crypto futures, allowing the exchange operator to tap into OKX’s 120 million user base.
The exchange of “everything”
The flurry of deals points to a larger transformation in how markets could work in the future.
For decades, stocks, bonds and funds were traded on separate systems with limited trading hours. Blockchain technology promises a unified, always-on marketplace, one that the industry believes could eventually host the settlement of all financial assets in the form of tokens.
Antoine Scalia, founder and CEO of crypto accounting and compliance platform Cryptio, said the developments point to a broader shift toward what he calls the “everything exchange,” a marketplace where all asset classes are traded on the same infrastructure.
“For a long time, it was just cryptocurrency people pushing the narrative that traditional finance and cryptocurrencies would merge,” Scalia said. “Now we see that the main stock markets are moving.”
“That is understanding that eventually all assets will sit on the blockchain rails,” he said.
This shift is accelerating with a January SEC Staff Statement on Tokenized Securities, which finally clarified that tokenized stocks have the same legal weight as their “paper” counterparts. That gives Wall Street holders the legal cover to enter the tokenized stock trading market.
‘Friend-enemy’
However, the key question, Scalia added, is which platforms will dominate that future market: traditional exchanges like Nasdaq or crypto-native venues like Coinbase (COIN) and Kraken.
But that does not mean that both sides are purely rivals. In many cases, they need each other.
Traditional exchanges seek access to crypto-native traders, while crypto platforms want the distribution and credibility that established financial infrastructure provides, Scalia said.
“Distribution works both ways,” he said. “Traditional exchanges want exposure to the cryptocurrency trading population, and there is a huge demand from cryptocurrency users to trade other types of assets. At the same time, crypto-native companies benefit from the reach of these traditional players to attract more people to the cryptocurrency markets.”
The result is an unusual, “frenemy”-like relationship between potential competitors. “It’s a very interesting dynamic with friction and complementarity,” Scalia said. “And it will be interesting to see how it develops.”
Why tokenized stocks are important
Tokenized stocks (currently $1 billion) are just a fraction of the global stock market, but the potential is huge as all types of assets increasingly move toward 24-hour, 24-hour trading.
A joint report by Boston Consulting Group and Ripple forecast that tokenized assets could grow 53% annually, reaching $18.9 trillion across all asset classes by 2033 as a base case.
The tokenized stock market showed even faster growth. Market value has tripled since mid-2025, data from RWA.xyz shows, as Kraken, Ondo Finance, Robinhood and a host of other exchanges and issuers launched tokenized versions of the stock.
The biggest advantage of putting traditional stocks on blockchains is continuous price discovery, said Yuki Yuminaga, founder of tokenization startup Tenbin Labs. Unlike today’s traditional stock markets, which operate on fixed trading hours, blockchain-based assets never sleep and can be traded 24 hours a day. This is likely to free up more capital, improve liquidity and reduce market volatility.
Stock tokenization can also unlock more efficient lending and borrowing through decentralized finance (DeFi), Yuminaga added. Tokenized shares could be used as collateral in lending markets, increasing capital efficiency and enabling new financing opportunities, he said.
Giants like Nasdaq and NYSE entering the tokenized stock game could also solve one of today’s biggest problems: liquidity.
“Tokenized stocks have struggled with liquidity because traditional markets and on-chain markets are separate,” Yuminaga said. “If Nasdaq connects those two liquidity pools, that could change the equation.”
