In 2026, crypto platforms began collectively turning their attention to U.S. stocks.
Last Friday evening, SpaceX completed its IPO on the U.S. stock market, nearly pushing this sentiment to a new high. As one of the most closely watched technology companies globally, SpaceX’s IPO was not only a capital markets event but also a stress test for retail investors worldwide entering the U.S. stock market.
On one side, there is extremely high market enthusiasm: SpaceX’s first-day trading performed strongly, with its stock price rising significantly above the offering price, and discussions around it quickly spread from traditional brokerages and financial media to the crypto community. On the other side, many investors experienced a more direct disappointment: some platforms heavily promoted SpaceX IPO subscription opportunities, but ultimately failed to allocate any shares to users, ending only in refunds.
In fact, this case clearly illustrates a key point: the U.S. stock trading services offered by crypto platforms are generally synthetic representations of U.S. stocks, not the actual stocks themselves. Against this backdrop, dissecting and analyzing how BIT operates as a professional U.S. stock platform holds significant practical relevance.
BIT is not a newly emerged stock trading platform. It evolved from Matrixport, whose co-founder is Wu Jihhan, formerly known as the "mining tycoon." In February 2026, BIT launched its U.S. stock trading service; by mid-May, just about 100 days after the launch of its U.S. stock business, user AUM had surpassed $200 million.
The key feature of BIT U.S. stocks products is that users trade actual U.S. stocks.
This means that during the fund deposit process, BIT better aligns with the real needs of both cryptocurrency and U.S. stock market users. Users can quickly deposit funds using USDT or USDC as stablecoins, enabling 24/7, instant settlement; alternatively, they can opt for standard stablecoin deposits via conventional wire transfer processes; if they have an overseas bank account, they can also deposit U.S. dollars directly via bank wire transfer.
More specifically, BIT also supports stock transfers. This means users who already hold U.S. stocks with other brokers do not need to sell their stocks, withdraw funds, and repurchase them; instead, they can directly transfer their existing U.S. stock holdings to BIT.
Although the launch of crypto-based platforms for U.S. stocks has largely resolved the issue of crypto users previously facing difficulties entering the U.S. stock market, a new problem arises: many users are unaware that, on major crypto platforms, what they are purchasing are more often tokenized representations of U.S. stocks rather than actual U.S. stocks.
Mapping US stocks to real US stocks is not easily distinguishable; it may be difficult to tell them apart on the trading interface. What you see could be NVDA, AAPL, MSFT—all with the same candlestick chart, a buy button, and profit/loss changes in your account.
When trading short-term, this distinction may not be obvious. As long as the price is accurate, liquidity is sufficient, and trades execute smoothly, many users won’t question what’s underneath. But once a user’s goal shifts from “making a single trade” to “allocating a class of assets,” this difference becomes significant.
Because physically holding stocks means users are not just entering a price system, but also gaining additional rights—such as dividends, voting rights, corporate actions, securities custody, clearing and settlement, and investor protection in extreme scenarios. A price contract can replicate price movements, but it cannot fully replicate the full chain of rights behind stocks as securities assets.
So, when you buy NVIDIA on most cryptocurrency trading platforms, you're not actually "holding NVIDIA stock."
This is precisely the watershed moment worth discussing when crypto platforms enter the U.S. stock market in 2026.
The most straightforward example is dividends.
U.S. stocks aren't just about price increases and decreases. For many companies and ETFs, dividends are a key component of long-term returns. Fidelity's data shows that, over the long term, dividends contribute approximately 40% to the total return of the S&P 500.
Let’s look at a few concrete examples using $1 million to make it more intuitive.
For example, some high-dividend U.S. stocks: Altria pays an annual dividend of approximately $4.24 per share; based on its stock price in early June 2026, holding $1 million for one year would generate about $58,700 in pre-tax cash dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of approximately 5.87%. Verizon, based on its most recent quarterly dividend annualized, pays about $2.83 per share annually; holding $1 million for one year would generate approximately $62,400 in pre-tax cash dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 6.24%. Realty Income, which distributes dividends monthly, has an annualized dividend of approximately $3.246 per share; holding $1 million for one year would generate about $53,000 in pre-tax cash dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of approximately 5.3%, with distributions made monthly.
This is just the result of looking at the dividends alone.
If these dividends are not withdrawn but instead used to buy more shares of the same stock, the compounded returns will be higher. Assuming pre-tax conditions, constant stock price, constant dividend payouts, and immediate reinvestment upon receipt, investing $1 million in Altria would generate approximately $60,000 in returns over one year from dividends and reinvestment alone, yielding about 6%. For Verizon, with quarterly dividend reinvestment, the annual return would be approximately $63,900, yielding about 6.39%. Realty Income, which pays dividends monthly and thus allows for more frequent reinvestment, would generate approximately $54,300 in annual returns, yielding about 5.43%.
Even when switching to more familiar tech stocks, the dividend yields are not as high as those of high-dividend stocks, but the difference still exists. NVIDIA is now more of a growth stock, with a very low dividend yield—holding $1 million for one year yields approximately $4,900 in pre-tax dividends, equivalent to an annual dividend yield of about 0.49%. Microsoft is more mature, with $1 million held for one year generating approximately $8,700 in pre-tax dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 0.87%. These figures may not seem as impressive as those of high-dividend stocks, but they still represent a real portion of your equity returns.
For many asset-allocation-focused funds, the appeal of these stocks goes beyond just share price—especially when the capital scale reaches $1 million, $10 million, or more—dividends are no longer "small change," but rather a substantial and consistent cash flow.
This is also the most easily overlooked difference between price mapping and the actual asset path.
If a user holds actual stocks in a securities account, dividends can enter their portfolio through corporate actions and their brokerage account. If a user purchases tokenized stocks, CFDs, or any price-mapping product, how dividends are reflected depends entirely on the product’s terms. Some products may reflect the economic impact of dividends through net asset value adjustments, price corrections, or other mechanisms—but this is not the same as receiving cash dividends directly into a shareholder account.
Another easily overlooked difference, besides dividends, is rollover.
Many U.S. stock products on CEXs are essentially a form of price exposure provided internally by the platform. Users can buy and sell these products and observe profit and loss movements closely aligned with actual U.S. stock prices, but these products typically do not allow positions to be transferred to other brokers or custodial accounts. In other words, if users wish to leave the platform, they often must first sell their positions, withdraw their funds, and then repurchase on another platform.
This is not the same as holdings in a real U.S. stock account. Real stocks can be transferred because they are backed by clear securities accounts, custodial relationships, and settlement and clearing processes. The assets are not merely accounting entries within a platform—they can be migrated within a compliant securities system.
BIT supports asset transfer, and the core reason lies here: its U.S. stock products are not merely price mappings, but are built on actual U.S. stock assets and the corresponding securities custody infrastructure. Therefore, users hold actual U.S. stock positions with comprehensive asset characteristics, rather than just price contracts tradable only within the platform.
This difference may not be obvious for day traders, but it is crucial for long-term holders. The larger the asset size and the longer the holding period, the more users need to care about one thing: Can this asset be withdrawn from the platform? Can it be transferred to another custodial system? Can it be migrated and managed like genuine securities assets?
Of course, the more complete the rights, the higher the requirements for the platform.
According to BIT’s public disclosures, its U.S. stock business does not involve creating internal platform-based contracts for stocks; instead, it enables users to access the U.S. stock trading and clearing system through Matrix Gelephu and licensed U.S. broker-dealers and clearing partners. BIT’s disclosures mention U.S. broker-dealer/clearing partners such as RQD Clearing and Atomic Vaults Securities, as well as the DTC transfer pathway.
If you break down how U.S. stock trading operates, the most core set of infrastructure is called DTCC.
DTCC is not a name the average user encounters daily, but nearly every U.S. securities transaction relies on its subsidiary system for post-trade processing. DTC handles the central custody of securities. In simple terms, U.S. stocks are not physically transferred between buyers and sellers like paper certificates; instead, ownership is transferred electronically within DTC’s system. According to DTCC’s disclosure in June 2025, the assets custodied by DTC have surpassed $1 quadrillion.
NSCC is responsible for clearing. It handles a large volume of broker-to-broker transactions in stocks, ETFs, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, ADRs, and more. According to DTCC’s 2024 Annual Report, NSCC processes an average daily transaction value of $2.219 trillion. More importantly, NSCC reduces the number of payment and securities delivery obligations by applying multilateral netting to compress the large volume of buy and sell orders in the market. DTCC itself discloses that NSCC reduces the total amount of payments requiring settlement by approximately 98% on an average daily basis.
The most critical mechanism here is called CCP novation. Originally, in a trade, the buyer and seller bear counterparty risk against each other: the buyer worries the seller won’t deliver the shares, and the seller worries the buyer won’t pay. After entering NSCC’s central clearing system, NSCC becomes the central counterparty, transforming the legal relationship from “buyer to seller” into “buyer to NSCC and NSCC to seller.” In other words, NSCC stands in the middle, converting countless bilateral credit risks in the market into more standardized, manageable clearing risks.
This is why the U.S. stock market can handle such enormous trading volumes.
OCC primarily handles the clearing of options and other derivatives, while FICC is responsible for clearing U.S. Treasuries, agency bonds, MBS, and other fixed-income products. For ordinary stock trading, users may not directly perceive OCC and FICC, but together they form the backend infrastructure of the U.S. capital markets. The front end is a simple buy button; behind it lies a highly specialized financial machinery.
For a cryptocurrency platform, entering this system is like learning a new language.
Crypto platforms are familiar with wallets, matching engines, on-chain addresses, perpetual contracts, funding rates, and internal platform accounting; the U.S. stock market is familiar with broker-dealers, clearing brokers, DTC, NSCC, SIPC, account structures, corporate actions, and clearing and settlement.
Both systems handle assets and transactions, but their underlying logic differs. The former is more like a real-time ledger, while the latter resembles a property rights system built by legal frameworks, accounts, and intermediaries.
Therefore, the challenge with real U.S. stocks is not whether there is market data or whether a buy button can be implemented, but how the platform integrates with brokers and clearing systems.
In traditional securities markets, broker-dealers have several models for clearing access. The first is self-clearing, where the broker-dealer becomes a clearing member and handles all post-trade operations internally, requiring significant capital, systems, compliance, and risk management capabilities. The second is fully disclosed introducing broker, where the introducing broker manages clients and front-end services, while the clearing broker opens disclosed accounts for each client to handle custody and clearing. The third is omnibus introducing broker, where the platform or introducing broker uses an omnibus account structure with the clearing broker, while maintaining underlying client records internally. The fourth is DVP/RVP—delivery versus payment / receipt versus payment—primarily used for securities settlement arrangements between institutional clients and custodian banks.
For a crypto-native platform, self-clearing is not the most practical first step. A more viable approach is to leverage the established broker-dealer and clearing infrastructure of the U.S. securities market, connecting user onboarding, securities accounts, trade execution, and clearing custody. In other words, rather than building a new U.S. stock market from scratch, integrate crypto users into the existing financial infrastructure of the U.S. securities market.
This is why, during the current phase where trading platforms are collectively capturing U.S. stock market traffic, compliance and settlement have become the most critical components.
For average users, the specific mechanisms behind these “stages” may not be noticeable. What users see at first glance is still whether they can buy, how fast funds arrive, how much the fees are, and how user-friendly the app is.
But when U.S. stocks shift from short-term trading instruments to long-term asset allocations, the legitimacy of the mechanism becomes important.
Because they hold a stock long-term, users care not only about how much it has risen today, but also whether it is truly their asset, how dividends and corporate actions are handled, where their securities account is located, who performs custody and clearing, and what mechanisms can protect their assets in extreme circumstances.
This is also the core trade-off for BIT’s U.S. stock products: it truly aims to make U.S. stocks a part of crypto users’ asset allocation, rather than just another leveraged game of chasing price trends.
We made a very firm decision even when we were still developing our product at the end of last year. This decision stems from the company’s seven-year heritage of serving institutions and high-net-worth clients, and from our long-term value orientation.
As Elio Cui, Head of BIT Brokerage, stated at a recent roundtable, BIT’s choice of this product lineup is closely tied to its historical corporate DNA.
If you only look at this year’s launch of the U.S. stock trading service, BIT might seem like a new platform that suddenly entered the retail market. However, when viewed over a longer timeline, the logic becomes much clearer: BIT is the rebranded identity of Matrixport, which since 2019 has consistently served institutional and high-net-worth clients across areas including custody, trading, asset and wealth management, liquidity and financing, and RWA.
BIT currently manages assets exceeding $6 billion, with monthly trading volume surpassing $7 billion, has paid over $2 billion in total interest to customers, and is valued at more than $1 billion. It has been listed on the 2024 Hurun Global Unicorn Index and the 2025 Singapore FinTech Unicorn List.
More widely known, Wu Jihann, co-founder and chairman of BIT, is also the CEO and chairman of Bitdeer.
BIT is not a typical traffic-driven trading platform.
Its previous clients were primarily institutions, professional investors, and high-net-worth individuals. These types of clients have different product requirements compared to retail traders. While they certainly care about returns, they are more concerned with where their assets are held, who is acting as custodian, how risks are isolated, who the counterparty is, whether the account structure is transparent, and whether the compliance boundaries are clearly defined.
Large clients are not easily swayed by the phrase "high returns." They care more about whether issues can be traced, asset ownership confirmed, and underlying processes explained. For them, moving slowly is not a drawback—in many cases, slowness is itself part of risk management.
This is the product philosophy behind BIT's U.S. stock business.
If a company’s core DNA is matching, leverage, traffic, and trading volume, when entering the U.S. stock market, it will naturally choose a lighter path: treating U.S. stocks as a fast-trading price product. This approach resembles a trading platform more closely and makes it easier to generate short-term trading volume.
But if a company’s capabilities stem more from institutional financial services, its primary consideration when entering the U.S. stock market is not just “how to enable users to trade,” but rather “how this asset should be held in the first place.”
Neither approach is inherently superior; they simply serve different needs.
Trading users seek speed, volatility, and the ability to enter and exit easily. Configuration users seek clarity, stability, and certainty in their asset chains.
U.S. stocks are particularly well-suited to this perspective. The equity of U.S.-listed companies is an asset composed of profits, cash flow, governance structure, and shareholder rights. For long-term investors, buying a stock is not merely betting on today’s or tomorrow’s price movements—it’s acquiring a share of the company’s future value creation.
In the crypto market, platforms are highly skilled at tokenizing all types of assets. BTC can be traded, ETH can be traded, and so can gold, U.S. stocks, indices, and macro events. This capability is powerful, enabling global capital to access asset prices more quickly. However, it also has a side effect: prices become amplified, and rights are weakened.
What BIT wants to do is bring back this aspect of rights.
This also explains why their U.S. stock business emphasizes "actual holdings," "shareholder rights," and "direct broker connectivity." It’s not about creating another highly volatile trading venue, but rather helping stablecoin users seamlessly enter the most established and mainstream class of assets in traditional markets.
In the crypto industry, speed is often a virtue. When a new narrative emerges, platforms must act quickly; when a new asset gains popularity, listing must be fast. Users seek rapid entry and exit, and the market rewards speed, volatility, and responsiveness. Multiples of 100x, 1,000x, even 10,000x—speed, precision, and decisiveness—are the language this industry knows best.
So, when a crypto platform claims it’s offering real U.S. stocks, real securities accounts, and a real clearing system, it doesn’t sound particularly exciting.
For a cryptocurrency platform, the fastest approach is naturally to integrate price feeds. By connecting to U.S. stock prices and turning them into trading pairs, tokens, or contracts, the product can be launched quickly. Users are already familiar with spot, perpetual, leverage, funding rates, and 24/7 trading on exchanges—this path is intuitive and most effective for generating rapid visibility.
But financial products ultimately come down to user experience, especially during critical moments.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the night of SpaceX’s IPO is a perfect example. When a highly anticipated IPO is imminent, many platforms engage in extensive pre-launch promotion, and users invest their time, attention, and even funds in anticipation of the outcome. But if they ultimately fail to secure an allocation, all they receive is a refund—losing not just the opportunity to subscribe, but also the time and opportunity costs incurred during the waiting period. The market does not pause for waiting users; the real trading window often lasts only a few hours.
This is why stability, reliability, and executability are more important than merely appearing fast.
Rather than loudly promoting IPO subscription only to leave investors disappointed, BIT’s approach offers users a reliable opportunity through steady, dependable execution. On the night of SpaceX’s listing, BIT’s system operated smoothly, allowing users to participate in pre-market and official trading through a genuine U.S. stock trading interface; many investors who bought during the pre-market session were thus able to capitalize on the price discovery opportunities of the first day.
In an industry that values speed, taking the time to build accounts, settle transactions, manage custody, ensure compliance, and establish real asset pathways may seem unexciting. But many of the most important aspects of finance aren’t realized in posters or marketing slogans—they’re demonstrated in whether orders execute, assets are confirmed, systems withstand pressure, and users can genuinely participate in the market during critical windows.
The larger the capital, the less it focuses solely on speed; the longer the investment horizon, the less it relies solely on screenshots of returns. Institutions and high-net-worth clients truly care about where their assets are held, how rights are verified, how risks are isolated, and whether issues can be traced.
This may be the true path BIT's U.S. stock business aims to pursue: not creating the fastest entry point for U.S. stock prices, but rather guiding stablecoin users into the real U.S. stock asset system in a more solid and reliable way.
Slow is fast.
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