This is an easy way for large companies to generate more liquidity (from foreign investors) and often has tax or other advantages for investors in that they don't need to report an FX pnl- they can just hold the stock in their main currency even though its primary listing is actually in a different currency.
These are usually called ADRs (American Depositary Receipts) and EDRs (European depositary receipts) based on whether the instrument is listed in the US or Europe. So the Vodaphone example above of a UK public company trading a depositary receipt on Nasdaq would be an ADR.
The point is the mechanism here is reasonably well-established in normal finance.
Unless tokenized securities will somehow make private investments accessible to non-accredited investors, this initiative seems to be entirely missing the elephant in the room, at least in the US.
There was an article on how cut-throat (pun intended) low the margins are for money laundering in the competition between businesses to get drug trafficked US dollars from Mexico to China.
And conversely, if the US government doesn't want you as a shareholder (and by extension US financial institutions can't serve you), good luck to anyone trying to (knowingly or negligently) redeem any VOO that you've touched.
The big institutions can measure their profits in terms of settlement time, going from 2 days to 1 day (previous infrastructure upgrades) to instantaneous (this) makes them more money.
In the EU, as far as I remember most modern brokers let you buy shares with unsettled proceeds of others without restrictions; in the US, getting a margin account takes no effort at all and bypasses the freeriding rules too.
Or how you see big institutions making more money by reducing settlement time?
They LOVE playing this game. "We are doing this so you can now be the whale you always dreamed you would be!" But mean while they cut you to shreds with fees.
(paper stock certificates are no longer a thing except in rare circumstances, digitization took place long ago ["dematerialization"] at the clearinghouse)
Also the dollar backed ones would only fail if the foundations behind them fail (Eg. USDC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/11/stablecoin-usdc-breaks-dolla...
Or is this yet another magical crypto thing where we collectively agree/imagine that tokens are somehow pegged to private companies, without any direct ownership to said companies?
Matt Levine has a good rundown here: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/newsletters/2025-06-26/any...
Makes me wonder what happens if/when the next WeWork or Theranos rolls around, and people are invested via these types of trades.
Surely we should keep comparing it to a decades old globalized financial system with formalized state support from many nations and a market cap measurable in the trillions.
But you can trade EU, FTSE100, EM, etc. at a PE range of 15-20. While this is not historically cheap, it is also ont over-rated.
Why does we risk a crash more by using crypto exchanges over regular exchanges?
This is an incredibly lazy comment and reads like an involuntary spasm.
It actually gets retail investors better prices than institutional or professional ones, since the counterparty can safely assume that there's "dumb money" on the other side of the trade.
That's not to say it's not controversial in some aspects, but it's not as simple a situation as you make it out to be.
Also, somewhat ironically, the front running risk on many decentralized exchanges is much higher due to MEV being a hard problem to solve trustlessly.
There's a reason real estate is one of the more popular ways for chinese nationals to move large amounts of money abroad, it's one of the less restricted ways to move large sums of money out of the country. So there's a lot of interest in expensive real estate not for occupation but just to buy to get cash out of the country into a stable asset that can be sold or borrowed against.
(Whether the risk is prices correctly can be discussed)
You're probably looking at coinmarketcap, which sets the price based on the trade pairs.
It is always $1.00 on coinbase.
Any who, even USDC appears to be relatively robost, though with another risk landscape than dai.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Good luck!
Specifically, I worry that decreasing supply and the corresponding upward pressure on prices will cause transaction fees to increase and therefore volume to decrease. Decreased volume might lower liquidity and allow an event like an old wallet coming online to trigger a price shock and maybe even a broader crisis of confidence in bitcoin's ability to serve as a store of value.
If you think this is very unlikely to happen, it's worth remembering that this has happened with gold in the past, in the US.
You can go to FINRA and the SEC.
> The basic idea behind tokenization: Use blockchain technology that powers cryptocurrencies to create digital tokens as stand-ins for things like bonds, real estate or even fractional ownership of a piece of art and that can be traded like crypto by virtually anyone, anywhere at any time.
> However, the SEC has struck a cautionary tone when it comes to tokens. Shortly after Robinhood’s announcement, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce, who has been an outspoken crypto supporter, issued a statement saying companies issuing tokenized stock should consider “their disclosure obligations” under federal law.
> “As powerful as blockchain technology is, it does not have magical abilities to transform the nature of the underlying asset,” Peirce said.
https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/peirce-stat...
> The SEC’s 2025 rules say crypto tokens are likely securities if they act like investment contracts. This means tokens sold with promises of profits, driven by a central team’s efforts, will be categorized as securities. The SEC’s 2025 guidance outlines specific scenarios in which crypto tokens will likely be classified as securities. These typically involve projects that are still centrally controlled, promote profit expectations, or offer limited utility at the time of sale.
https://cointelegraph.com/explained/secs-2025-guidance-what-...
Schrödinger's tokens?
The implied "problem" with USDC isn't depeg, it is this (and who controls it):
https://gist.github.com/chappjc/350aafb9031f7a66986967bf8ab6...
Regardless, it depends on what risks we a looking at. Wait you raise is not really a credit risks - though I do understand why it concerns you.
Btw: https://www.theblock.co/post/349168/circle-paid-210-million-...
Interesting, it goes a bit further than I had kept up with. CENTRE seems disbanded. But given this is all crypto, it is full of backroom deals... one can be sure that Circle and Coinbase are tightly coupled.
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/coinbase-and-ripple-vie-for-u...