Author: Lao Bai

Editor's Note: In the current financial environment, the evolution of digital assets has sparked extensive discussion. @coolish (Paul Wei) points out that the rights associated with shares of publicly traded companies are completely subject to a single government and centralized power. This structure raises questions about the necessity of converting shares into tokens, as those who suffer losses are often the rule-makers, and arbitrage affecting scale may be vetoed by centralization. In contrast, the survival of Crypto relies on decentralized node distribution, and even the currently unstable DeAI aligns with this principle. However, the rights behind stock are fundamentally determined by a single government power, which undermines the necessity of tokenization.

Based on this, Lao Bai further explores topics related to synthetic assets and tokenized stocks. He mentions that synthetic assets provide a price exposure similar to stock spot, and in past market voting, users tended to prefer real assets over synthetic ones. Additionally, he notes that attempts to tokenize stocks are not new; the evolution of the regulatory environment has once again drawn attention to this field. Lao Bai emphasizes that despite the rights behind stocks being subject to government, tokenized stocks may still become part of the global expansion of dollar assets. Below is the original text of Lao Bai's reply:

1. Synthetic Assets

At that time, many friends said that if all you want is a price exposure similar to stock spot, and you want to hold long-term to avoid the wear and tear of Funding Rates like in Perp, then synthetic assets are the best way.

Personally, as someone who followed through from the SNX era to the Luna era's Mirror, and even if you consider GMX's GLP as a "variant synthetic asset," many designs in it are very fancy. I vaguely remember the stunning feeling when I first saw SNX synthetic assets and GLP designs during the DeFi Summer era (GLP did not have stocks, later GNS was inspired by GLP to create synthetic asset pools that can trade anything including stocks).

However, the market has already voted with real money once, and what users ultimately chose is real assets (or said, credible mapped assets) > synthetic assets.

This is not related to decentralization, technology, or mechanism; it is simply more trustworthy, assets backed by real assets.

Interestingly, synthetic assets that did not reach the top but survived in the end, one is DAI (USDS), and another is USDE, both are semi-centralized solutions.

2. Tokenized Stocks - I was fortunate enough to discuss a topic with a sister more than a year ago. At that time, she asked me what I saw as the biggest problem in the crypto circle. My answer was, "We have over-financialized too many things," and I was more viewing Meme, Gamefi, and AI Crypto from a VC perspective as directions of looking for nails with a hammer.

The sister replied that she believed we lack good assets. Essentially, we were saying the same thing. At that time, I also asked her if she had considered Binance launching stock trading; she mentioned that Binance had attempted it in 2021, but due to regulatory pressure, the product was taken down in just a few months.

Therefore, tokenized stocks in our circle are actually a second attempt. The first trial by Binance and FTX in 2021 was halted by regulations— but now, traditional CEXs like Binance and Bitget, along with platforms like BIT, StableStock, and MSX, are trying again, indicating that the regulatory environment and product structure have evolved in the past few years rather than simply repeating past mistakes.

3. Soul Blood in the Hands of an Enemy

Here, I agree with Wei Shen’s view that "the rights behind stocks are fundamentally a product of single government power" and "those who suffer losses are themselves the rule-makers." However, we can look at it from another perspective—if you view Alpaca as Tether, doesn’t this logic all make sense?

Stablecoins are currently one of the most widely used and successful products in Crypto. No one says, "Because the dollar is controlled by the Federal Reserve, stablecoins have a fundamental flaw."

In other words, "centralized underlying assets" ≠ "the act of tokenization has no value."

Of course, Alpaca does not yet have the volume and reputation of Tether, but when USDT first started, Tether was also accompanied by various doubts, whether regarding asset reserves, worries about being choked by the Federal Reserve, or concerns that USDT would be used for regulatory arbitrage, gray markets, or even terrorist activities… But after several years, it has already reached a size of hundreds of billions.

Stablecoins are now seen as one of the means of the global expansion of the dollar's hegemony; why can't tokenized stocks be seen as a means of the global expansion of dollar assets?

If we say "the injured party is the rule-maker, and if the influence is great, it will be vetoed"—if in the coming years the influence is great enough to be vetoed, it precisely proves one point, that the influence at this scale itself has already demonstrated its value and vitality, which is strikingly similar to the growth path of stablecoins in the past. As for how the final regulatory framework evolves, that is another question.

Crypto has been creating new trading methods over the past decade, but it has rarely created new high-quality assets. When a market lacks asset supply, it will continuously financialize existing assets. Meme, Perp, various high-leverage products are essentially this result.

From this perspective, tokenized stocks may not be creating new financial instruments, but are instead introducing new asset supply to Crypto. Some arbitrage is merely a current feature, not the entire purpose. On one side are major CEXs and users' genuine thirst for quality assets, while on the other side, in the backdrop of de-globalization, the globalization expansion of the dollar and dollar assets achieves a perfect match between supply and demand, so I firmly believe in the future of tokenized stocks :)

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