Author: David, Trend Research

Tokenized US stocks have been one of the fastest-growing sectors in the crypto industry over the past two years, and also one of the most criticized sectors.

What are they criticized for? For being shells.

For example, if you spend 100 USDT to buy a token called NVDA, thinking you own a small piece of Nvidia stock. In reality, what you receive is likely just a shadow that follows the stock price. Without real stocks underpinning it, without dividends, without any rights that a stock should have.

Yet this criticized sector has become the prevailing trend in this version of the crypto industry.

Among them, there is one exchange that has produced a set of impressive figures.

According to Bitget's Q1 2026 transparency report, the peak trading volume of non-crypto assets currently accounts for 40% of the platform's total volume. Stocks, gold, foreign exchange—these items that should appear in brokerage apps—are now being traded significantly on crypto exchanges.

TokenInsight's contract market report for Q1 this year provides another perspective: Bitget's stock perpetual contracts rank second globally, with a market share of 22.61%.

Additionally, among the tokenized stocks issued by Ondo, Bitget accounted for about 89% of the trading volume. The cumulative trading volume of stock futures exceeded 10 billion USD, and spot trading surpassed 1 billion USD.

Now, looking from the user's side.

According to the user asset allocation report released by Bitget this May, 52% of users already hold both cryptocurrencies and US stocks in their portfolios. Half of the users no longer just buy coins; their accounts now contain assets from two worlds.

And all these numbers were zero a year ago.

Of course, the numbers are impressive, and the demand is indeed there. However, from our observations, a sharper question lies behind the numbers:

What exactly are you buying when it comes to these on-chain US stocks? Or have you spent real money just to buy a refined price shadow?

This question, Bitget took nine months to answer.

Using Lessons from Others to Tackle US Stocks

In Q3 last year, Bitget started listing US stocks, using the approach of learning from others.

Ondo and xStocks are third-party issued tokenized stocks, with Bitget responsible for listing and matching trades. At the same time, they launched the industry's first US stock index perpetual contracts, with up to 100 times leverage, available for trading 7×24 hours.

This model ran for a few months, and by the end of December last year, the contract volume reached 10 billion USD, a very considerable scale. The demand was confirmed; users indeed wanted to engage with US stocks in crypto exchanges. But there were issues with the products themselves.

Learning from others can work, but if the stones are too coarse, a smooth experience cannot be created. As volume increased, so did the problems.

For example, if you search for Nvidia and purchase 100 USDT of on-chain NVDA tokens, the price indeed follows Nasdaq. Then what?

Firstly, the depth is at the level of a DEX, and any slightly larger order shows visible slippage; secondly, regarding stock holding rights, if Nvidia issues dividends every quarter, you won't receive a cent. When the stock is split, your holdings may take several days to be updated.

For on-chain US stocks, you basically only end up buying a price, and nothing else.

In fact, these three issues are not just Bitget's problems; they are common among the entire tokenized US stock sector. Third-party issuers control the underlying assets and product logic, while exchanges are merely shelves displaying goods, with depth, dividends, and asset availability not set by you.

The ceiling of the agency model is the ceiling of others' products.

At this stage, exchanges like Bitget had two options ahead. One was to continue patching up on someone else's infrastructure, and the other was to build their own ship. They chose the heavier path.

Self-Improvement: When Stocks on Bitget Start Paying Dividends

Recently, Nvidia announced an increase in its quarterly dividend from 0.01 USD to 0.25 USD per share, with the next payment date on June 26. If you hold rNVDA on Bitget, your account may see an amount of cash dividends converted into USDT at that time, and your holding cost will be updated automatically.

This is likely the first time in the on-chain US stock sector where "real equity" has been achieved. The corresponding rights exist because the underlying assets of on-chain US stocks have completed a new evolution on Bitget.

In June this year, Bitget launched a platform called Reality. This name translates directly to "reality." In a crypto US stock sector filled with shadow assets, this name itself is more like a declaration:

When tokenized stocks become the mainstream of the future, they will shed the prefix "tokenized" and become the default stocks in people's discourse, while the stocks currently traded will be labeled with the prefix and called "traditional stocks."

This may sound futuristic, but what Reality aims to do is make it a reality.

The platform's operations are not complex. Instead of sourcing from the original Ondo or xStocks, it issues tokenized US stocks directly through Reality. Issuance is handled by Reality, custody is managed by the licensed broker Alpaca, and audits are conducted independently by The Network Firm, with each part performing its duty.

The stocks issued by the platform are called rTokens, and the US stock tickers you buy on Bitget will be presented in the form beginning with 'r.'

How does rToken differ in experience compared to the batch of third-party tokens from half a year ago?

The most direct difference is that you can finally figure out whether there is something real behind it. In the 1.0 era of tokenized US stocks, the underlying custody path was basically a black box to users, and you had no idea whether the NVDA you bought had an actual Nvidia stock behind it.

Reality has opened up this chain. rTokens, as tokenized US stocks, are mapped to real underlying assets.

For example, if you buy 100 USD of rNVDA on Bitget, Reality buys a corresponding number of real Nvidia stocks through Alpaca on the US stock market, storing them in Alpaca's custody account. Whatever amount you buy, it buys the same amount, 1:1 correspondence.

Public information shows that Alpaca is a licensed self-clearing broker in the United States, registered with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), and protected by the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC).

SIPC is a federal investor insurance mechanism in the US, meaning that even if the broker has problems, the securities assets in the custody account are still guaranteed, with a limit of 500,000 USD. Alpaca is currently one of the most frequently used custodians in the tokenized securities field, with Binance, Ondo, and xStocks also being clients of Alpaca.

Independent audits are conducted by The Network Firm, providing CPA-level reports that confirm the reserve rate is over 100%. Bitget also created an on-chain reserve proof dashboard that updates in real-time and is accessible to everyone.

You have bought an asset, and you know it is real. This is the change perceived on the usage level.

Following this perception, you can see the entire design philosophy of the Reality architecture. Bitget has deconstructed the tokenized US stocks into three layers for reconstruction:

The first layer is making the underlying real. What has been mentioned about Alpaca's custody, 1:1 purchases, and on-chain reserve proof addresses is fundamentally addressing the basic trust issue of "does what you buy have something real behind it."

The second layer is completing the rights. Stock dividends are proportionately allocated to accounts as tokens, cash dividends converted to USDT are directly credited, and stock splits and merges are mapped in real time on-chain. In the previous two years, when you bought tokenized Nvidia elsewhere, you watched real shareholders receive money quarterly while your account remained static. This time, it is the rToken holders' turn.

The third layer is activating the assets.

rTokens are integrated into Bitget's unified account system, allowing the rNVDA in your hand to be used directly as margin. You can use Nvidia's position to open a BTC contract, leveraging a US stock for a crypto contract. Cross-asset margin is a privilege reserved for institutions in brokerages and was previously unthinkable in the earlier on-chain US stocks; now, an ordinary user on Bitget can achieve a similar effect.

After this phase of self-construction, what about the cost of purchasing stocks?

According to publicly disclosed rates from various platforms, buying 1000 USD of US stocks costs about 0.4 USD on Bitget, while traditional internet brokerages usually charge around 2 USD.

When viewed together, tokenized US stocks on Bitget have undergone a qualitative change: from a shadow token that only follows prices to a financial product with real custody, complete rights, and the ability to be mixed with crypto assets.

This kind of thing two years ago, neither brokerages would do it, nor could exchanges.

Some may ask, since the goal is to engage with US stocks, why not take a simpler route, such as directly connecting with a brokerage's channel and just doing a frontend?

Bitget's choice is exactly the opposite; it does not rely on traditional finance, but instead uses crypto and on-chain methods to reconstruct this path. Reality controls the stack from custody to distribution to on-chain mapping, and rTokens themselves are on-chain assets that can be charged, withdrawn, and combined—things that direct broker solutions cannot achieve.

As I write this, I am reminded of that famous line from "The Wind Rises": The bigger the storm, the more valuable the fish.

However, to navigate through the turbulent market environment to catch more fish, a reliable boat is needed. Renting someone else's boat is possible, but a boat built by oneself sets its own water level.

This is probably the ambitious vision of Bitget's Reality platform that has not been explicitly stated in various promotional materials but is very apparent.

Moreover, it is clear that Bitget does not intend to only use this boat to carry US stocks.

Not Just US Stocks: The Prototype of a Comprehensive Exchange

The boat has been built, and the first batch of cargo is not just stocks of listed companies.

In April this year, Bitget launched a product called IPO Prime, allowing ordinary users to subscribe to companies that have not yet gone public. The first phase was SpaceX, with a subscription price of 650 USD per share and a total pool of about 61 million USD. The result was an influx of 177 million USD, with 14,435 participants vying for it.

The second phase switched to OpenAI, with a subscription price of 725 USD per share and a pool of around 21 million USD, with actual subscriptions reaching 120 million USD, involving 5,448 participants, nearly six times oversubscribed.

Combined, these two phases resulted in nearly 300 million USD in subscriptions, with almost 20,000 participants.

The common feature of these two companies is that ordinary people have no way to buy equity exposure before they go public in the world of traditional finance. Behind IPO Prime is an SPV structure in collaboration with Republic, providing real equity anchoring.

Beyond Pre-IPO, Bitget launched TradFi at the end of last year, a CFD product priced in USDT covering 79 categories including foreign exchange, gold, commodities, and stock indices, with peak daily trading volume exceeding 8 billion USD.

With Reality continuously expanding its US stock rTokens daily, the types of assets that can be encountered in one account on Bitget have far exceeded the traditional definition of "crypto exchange."

Internally, Bitget refers to this direction as UEX, a comprehensive exchange.

CEO Gracy Chen first publicly mentioned this concept last September, making the goal very direct: to cover crypto, US stocks, gold, ETFs, and foreign exchange through a single account for a one-stop trading of globally high-quality assets.

To support this framework, the team is also expanding.

Public information shows that Bitget has intensively hired a group of composite talents with backgrounds in traditional finance and internet growth over the past six months, with candidates coming from firms like Futu, LongBridge, Robinhood, and eToro, covering cross-market experiences in the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Australia, with collaborations in dealings with traditional financial institutions like Nasdaq.

From the direction of talent acquisition, this is not a crypto exchange playing catch-up but more like a new species building its own framework.

What I find interesting is Bitget's attitude towards this matter. There is a lighter path to engage in US stock trading, connecting with a brokerage to provide a frontend where users can buy and sell.

Many platforms follow this path. Yet Bitget deliberately chose the heaviest one, building its own issuance platform, establishing its own custody pathway, with rTokens being chargeable, withdrawable, and combinable on the chain.

Why?

From product choice, Bitget's stance has become very clear. The direct broker connection solution essentially still serves traditional finance at the frontend, wherein the stocks users buy exist within the broker's system, unable to interact with the on-chain, withdraw to a wallet, and certainly cannot leverage it to BTC.

What Reality is doing with rTokens is inherently on-chain assets, enabling many more functionalities than broker pathways. Choosing the heavy path is not about liking to suffer, but because the easy path cannot reach the destination they want to go to.

I believe there is a greater judgment behind this choice: Blockchain and Crypto are currently tools for issuing and trading tokens without a future, but they can reshape the experience and distribution of financial products.

Reality is the first product based on this judgment. Saying this three years ago might not have garnered belief from anyone, but compared with the current product logic, it is not baseless.

As for how far this path can ultimately go, it is still too early to conclude.

However, one thing is certain: Bitget is no longer the crypto-only exchange it was a year ago.

From agency to self-construction, from US stocks to Pre-IPO to foreign exchange and gold, from a cryptocurrency trading platform to a comprehensive portal where anything can be traded, every step along this path is adding new decks to the ship they built.

The ship is already in the water; next, we will see how far it can sail.

This article is based on official product materials and publicly available market information from Bitget. The product features and data mentioned are based on the latest version of the Bitget platform. Trend Research has independently verified the product descriptions but does not guarantee platform operations or asset security.

Tokenized stocks are an emerging financial product, and the custody, audit, and compliance framework of underlying assets is still evolving. Regulatory attitudes toward such products vary significantly across different jurisdictions, and investors should independently assess the associated risks.

The market has risks; decisions must be independent.

Data sources: Bitget Q1 2026 transparency report · Bitget user asset allocation report (May 2026) · TokenInsight Q1 contract market report · The Network Firm audit report · publicly disclosed rates from various platforms.

Trend Research · June 2026