coindesk.com
As stock exchanges from London to New York and around the world move toward 24/7 trading and blockchain-based settlement, crypto platforms are racing in the opposite direction, adding traditional equities to their platforms.
Crypto.com and trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) offer tokenized stocks in Europe, while Bitpanda offers regular U.S. stocks rather than tokenized ones. Coinbase (COIN) has secured U.K. regulatory approval to offer equities and derivatives alongside crypto, and its U.S. users already have access to stock and exchange-traded fund trading.
As the differences between blur, rival Kraken, which also offers tokenized versions of U.S. equities in Europe, is upping the stakes by adding direct trading in more than 7,000 U.S.-listed stocks for customers across the European Economic Area, the crypto exchange said Tuesday.
The move makes it the only crypto-native exchange to offer both traditional equities and tokenized versions of some of the same shares, the exchange said. It puts the company in direct competition with traditional firms such as Interactive Brokers (IBKR) and eToro (ETOR), as well as the crypto platforms offering tokenized shares
"This launch eliminates the artificial divide between traditional and tokenized formats of the same asset," said Mark Greenberg, chief commercial officer of Payward, Kraken's parent company. "Customers can choose how they access the same underlying exposure without moving capital or changing platforms."
The expansion reflects a broader shift in what crypto exchanges are becoming, buoyed by hype around emerging industries such as AI and companies like SpaceX (SPCX).
"As a good financial platform, you need to offer optionality to your consumers, whether that is crypto, tokenized stocks, or true stocks," Erald Ghoos, CEO of OKX Europe, said in an interview.
"Traditional banks are now finally starting to dip their toes into crypto," he said. "The traditional crypto players are going into traditional finance. Both ultimately have one goal: to become a super app offering all different types of assets."
Keith Grose, U.K. CEO of Coinbase, said the impetus for the convergence is driven by user demand.
"Users want to get more and more of their financial life in a fewer set of places," he told CoinDesk. "We're moving from a world where you have an app for every asset class to users having one or two major platforms they use for most of their financial life."