Tokenization of US Stocks and AI Agents: The Rise of a New Stablecoin Track, Expected to Attract Global Liquidity

In the field of Crypto Assets, stablecoins are moving from a marginal role to the core of financial innovation. With accelerated legislation, active corporate participation, and rapid growth in volume, stablecoins leverage their advantages of immediate settlement and a lightweight account system, not only demonstrating disruptive potential in traditional payment areas but also becoming a key driving force in the tokenization of US stocks (RWA) and AI Agent payment scenarios. Analysts Song Jiajie and Ren Heyi from Guosheng Securities pointed out in their latest research report that the innovative integration of these two new tracks is expected to become a new catalyst worth looking forward to in the second half of the year, likely to siphon global Liquidity.

I. US Stock Tokenization Reignites RWA Craze: The Intersection of Traditional Finance and the Crypto World

As an important branch of real-world asset tokenization (RWA), the tokenization of US stocks is entering a critical period of accelerated implementation. In the past, stock tokenization briefly emerged on platforms like Mirror Protocol, supporting the synthetic tokenization of US stock assets such as Tesla and Google, but fell silent due to regulatory issues and market volatility. Now, with the advancement of the RWA regulatory framework, interest in stock tokenization in the market is heating up again.

Against the backdrop of a gradually clearer regulatory environment, traditional financial institutions represented by BlackRock and cryptocurrency institutions are actively lobbying regulators to promote the resurgence of stock tokenization.

Coinbase's Active Layout: The cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is seeking approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to offer users "tokenized stock" trading services.

Kraken's xStocks Service: The established exchange Kraken has taken the lead in announcing a partnership with Backed Finance to launch the "xStocks" service, which initially includes over 50 U.S. listed stocks and ETFs such as Apple, Tesla, and NVIDIA. This service not only provides cryptocurrency investors with a channel for allocating traditional financial assets but may also significantly enhance the circulation scale of stablecoins by expanding their usage scenarios.

Robinhood's European Practice: The American brokerage firm Robinhood has launched RWA products for over 200 US stocks and ETFs on the Ethereum Layer2 Arbitrum. These assets are self-custodied by Robinhood, with each Token corresponding 1:1 to a real stock, supporting 24/5 free trading, on-chain transfers, and can be redeemed at any time for real stocks or stablecoins. This service is open to EU users, who can buy stock Tokens directly in euros through the Robinhood EU app or website, trading commission-free with low exchange fees, and is based on the EU MiCA and Lithuanian license.

The report analysis states that the massive scale of the US stock market is sufficient to drive rapid expansion in stablecoin demand. As an on-chain "fiat currency," stablecoins play a role as an infrastructure tool in tokenized trading of US stocks, and are expected to become the next important application scenario for stablecoins.

II. AI Agent Opens a New Era of Smart Payments: Deep Integration of Stablecoins and AI

The deep integration of stablecoins and AI Agents is seen as another high-potential market. Especially in future AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) scenarios, AI Agents may replace humans in performing a large number of payment operations.

The report points out that the complex authorization process of traditional financial accounts is not friendly to AI, often requiring user authorization, financial institution review, and other multiple steps, while stablecoins based on blockchain's lightweight account system are naturally suitable for AI Agent manipulation. The introduction of blockchain smart contracts further strengthens the integration of AI decision-making and payments, allowing AI Agents not only to provide analytical recommendations but also to directly operate user accounts, achieving true smart payments. Moreover, blockchain accounts are essentially smart contracts, inherently possessing AI genes, including features reflected in flash loans, automated market maker (AMM) protocols, and others.

The report mentions that, taking intent-centric applications as an example, users only need to authorize with "one click", and AI can optimize the trading path through algorithms to achieve efficient exchange from Token A to Token B without manual intervention from users. This high integration of AI with blockchain accounts provides a vast imagination space for stablecoin payment scenarios, especially in the fields of automated trading and smart payments.

However, the report also adds that AI Agent payments are still in the early stages, and the decentralized architecture of blockchain networks leads to obvious efficiency bottlenecks. For example, the Ethereum mainnet can only process double-digit transactions per second, far below the efficiency of traditional payment systems (such as Alipay’s Double 11 peak of 256,000 transactions per second). The issues of technical scalability and network congestion urgently need to be addressed; otherwise, it will be difficult to support large-scale user demand.

3. The competition in payment scenarios is becoming increasingly fierce, and stablecoins have enormous potential

The application potential of stablecoins in the international payment field is also significant, with their peer-to-peer and payment-on-settlement characteristics clearly advantageous compared to the high costs and low efficiency of traditional financial systems. In underdeveloped areas, stablecoins have even achieved "leapfrogging," enabling dollar payments through mobile registration of blockchain accounts, addressing the issue of lack of banking service coverage. In addition, payment giant Stripe acquired Bridge for $1.1 billion, launching stablecoin financial account services covering 101 countries, further connecting stablecoins with fiat payment systems.

The report also mentioned that there are "heterogeneous" characteristics among different stablecoin varieties, making market competition exceptionally fierce. Even the trading volume of USDC, which is under Coinbase, is only one-eighth that of USDT; the scale of the PYUSD stablecoin launched by payment giant Paypal is only about 950 million USD, far below market expectations. The report added that for stablecoins to be widely used in the payment sector, it is necessary to address the efficiency bottlenecks caused by the "impossible triangle" constraints of blockchain.

4. The Future of Tokenized Stocks: Challenges and Opportunities Coexist

Tokenization of US stocks is not a new concept. As early as around 2020, centralized exchanges like FTX and Binance launched "tokenized stock" products. However, they were essentially asset certificates on the CEX's internal ledger, lacking on-chain transparency and composability, and ultimately went offline due to the collapse of FTX and regulatory pressure.

By 2025, tokenized stocks will see a resurgence, not just from Robinhood, but more native crypto companies and traditional financial firms will be laying out plans for tokenized stocks.

Dinari's compliance breakthrough: The fintech startup Dinari, headquartered in San Francisco, has become the first tokenized equity platform in the United States to obtain a broker-dealer registration, planning to officially launch in the U.S. market in the coming months. Its core product dShares represents ownership in real stocks and is backed 1:1 by actual assets, currently authorized by the SEC. Dinari adopts a B2B model, integrating its trading interface into other platforms.

Market Outlook: Motley Fool analyst Travis Hoium states that tokenized stocks could change the investment model for public and private companies, enabling 24/7 trading, improving trading efficiency, and lowering participation barriers. Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley believes that tokenization can create a more inclusive capital market, expanding participation in the U.S. public market to more small and medium-sized enterprises, promoting financial democratization.

However, critics also point out that there are still many issues to be resolved before tokenized stocks can be traded widely. A report released last month by the World Economic Forum noted that insufficient liquidity in the secondary market and the lack of clear global standards are two major challenges facing the application of tokenized stocks.

Conclusion:

The tokenization of US stocks and AI Agent payments are becoming two new engines for the development of stablecoins. They not only provide cryptocurrency investors with more asset allocation options but also open up broad application scenarios for stablecoins. Although technological scalability and regulatory standardization remain challenges, with the active participation of traditional financial giants and crypto-native companies, as well as the continuous development of blockchain technology, stablecoins are expected to siphon global liquidity in these new tracks, ushering in a new era of intelligent payments and asset tokenization.