u.today
The US stock market is breaking records, with the S&P 500 surpassing 7,534 points. It has risen 75% over the past five years, but only a small part of the world is profiting from this growth. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is convinced that the traditional financial system has become a closed club and that only tokenization can fix it.
"Imagine being on the sidelines of this growth," Armstrong wrote. According to him, billions of people do not even need to imagine it, because strict geographical barriers, complex compliance requirements, and brokerage bureaucracy leave them with no practical way to buy shares in major US technology companies directly.
Imagine being on the sidelines of this growth.
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 16, 2026
Billions of people don’t have to imagine - they have no access to invest in American companies. The S&P500 is up 75% in the last 5 years, and the majority of the world just had to watch from the sidelines.
Tokenized stocks are… pic.twitter.com/DKqeOEcwhq
Experts estimate that more than half of the adult population in developing countries is currently completely cut off from global capital markets.
The "Everything Exchange": Bringing Wall Street to smartphones
The crypto exchange has decided to capitalize on this gap by launching its "Everything Exchange". A month ago, Coinbase rolled out tokenized stock trading for non-US users through its offshore entities, with the tokens backed 1:1 by real shares.
The idea is simple: remove Wall Street intermediaries and allow anyone, anywhere in the world, to buy even a fractional stake in Apple or Nvidia using an ordinary smartphone with internet access while still receiving real dividends.
The most interesting part is that Wall Street itself is no longer arguing against this trend but is trying to lead it. Clearing giant DTCC, which processes transactions worth quadrillions of dollars, together with JPMorgan and BlackRock, completed tests this week involving the transfer of stock ETFs onto blockchain infrastructure.
With the total market for tokenized real-world assets, or RWA, surpassing $33 billion, according to rwa.xyz, and the US Senate moving the Clarity Act toward a final vote, stock tokenization is a new edge in the battle for retail investors, in which traditional brokers risk permanently losing their century-old monopoly.