"RWA narrative" welcomes heavyweight catalyst! Nasdaq (NDAQ.US) sounds the horn of tokenization of American stocks.

Nasdaq announced on Monday plans to launch a groundbreaking "stock tokenization design," allowing listed companies on the US stock market to have more control over their tokenized stocks, including matters related to proxy voting, corporate actions, and governance rights. This move by Nasdaq signifies that stock assets are getting closer to being traded "in token form," with a wave of Real-World Assets (RWA) extending from government bonds, money market funds, and private credit towards more complex asset classes like stocks, provided that they follow a regulated, interchangeable, and compatible path with existing market structures. This initiative follows a tokenization proposal submitted by Nasdaq to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in September. In this proposal, Nasdaq stated that the plan allows for securities assets to be traded on its market and settled in token form through the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Nasdaq announced on Monday that its partner Payward - the parent company of the global cryptocurrency platform Kraken - will design a key gateway/liquidity portal to facilitate the daily circulation of tokenized stocks between regulated markets and chain markets. Payward and Kraken's co-CEOs, Arthur Cesky, stated in a joint statement: "Our collaboration with Nasdaq contributes to building the liquidity layers and core applications needed for the operation of tokenized stocks in a global, 24/7 market structure." Additionally, Nasdaq announced a deep partnership with Seturion, a pan-European tokenized asset settlement platform under the Stuttgart Stock Exchange Group. Nasdaq's listing trading venues in Europe will access Seturion to trade tokenized securities settled formally through the platform. Earlier this year, one of Nasdaq's main competitors, the New York Stock Exchange, announced plans to build a trading platform using cutting-edge blockchain technology to enable 24/7 trading of tokenized stocks and exchange-traded open-end index fund assets (ETF assets). The NYSE, owned by Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., plans to combine its existing matching technology with private-level blockchain technology from Network-1 Technologies, Inc. for real-time and 24-hour trading of tokenized securities. The tokenization of stocks brings real value by reconstructing the "trading time, settlement speed, asset programmability, and global distribution capability" of the stock market. Nasdaq and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, are designing a gateway for tokenized stocks to flow between regulated markets and chain markets, while NYSE has announced the development of a platform supporting 24/7 trading, instant settlement, and stablecoin deposits for tokenized securities. In other words, traditional stock exchanges no longer see tokenization as an "experiment in the crypto industry," but rather as a "new channel" for the next generation of the securities market. This points to a clear market direction: longer trading hours, lower settlement friction, fewer intermediary levels, and stronger global liquidity integration capabilities. Is the RWA super wave coming? According to predictions by Ripple and the Boston Consulting Group, the scale of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) is expected to exceed $18 trillion by 2033, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of up to 53% since 2025. The trend of tokenization, with RWA at its core - including government bonds, loans, fund shares, real estate, receivables, carbon credits, and other measurable traditional financial/physical assets on the chain - refers to mapping any quantifiable value originally existing in traditional financial systems or the real economy into digital token assets that are programmable and transferable on the chain. Most studies describe the concept of RWA as "representing ownership of tangible or off-chain assets through tokens issued by smart contracts on the blockchain." The World Economic Forum points out that tokenization allows these assets to have a shared ledger, real-time settlement, and programmable attributes, greatly reducing delivery risk and significantly improving asset trading efficiency. For traditional banking giants, the broad wave of RWA tokenization not only expands revenue sources for financial businesses but also further explores blockchain efficiency dividends within the compliance framework. For traditional large banks on Wall Street, RWA, being backed by physical or legal rights, is easier to incorporate into existing financial regulatory frameworks than "purely cryptographic" assets. In addition, underlying assets such as bonds and loans have cash flows that can provide stable investment income for on-chain financial products, aligning with the banking business model. RWA is likely to be one of the most important themes in the next few years for chaining traditional financial infrastructure, but whether it can develop into a "super wave" like artificial intelligence technology depends on the combination of regulation, issuer participation, and interchangeability with the old system. The current trend is indeed very strong: data from RWA.xyz shows that the distributed asset value of on-chain RWAs has reached about $26.5 billion; the three major US banking regulatory agencies have just clearly stated that banks with tokenized securities do not need additional capital penalties, emphasizing regulatory neutrality towards technology. However, Nasdaq's rule modifications still require regulatory progress, and the tokenization of stocks involves issues such as investor protection, market transparency, best execution, and interchain legal mapping, which are much more complex than tokenization of government bonds.