Crypto exchanges spent years competing with one another for traders, but their next major rivals may be coming from outside the digital asset industry.
From fintechs such as Robinhood and Stripe to traditional firms including Nasdaq and BlackRock, companies are pushing deeper into what is widely considered one of crypto's most consequential use cases yet: asset tokenization.
The process involves creating blockchain-based representations of traditional assets such as stocks. It has accelerated in recent months, with the total value of tokenized assets onchain reaching $34bn in July 2026, up from about $12bn a year earlier.
While tokenization currently represents a tiny fraction of the capital available in traditional markets, it's already reshaping the financial services industry. As financial firms bring stocks and other assets onchain, they are moving into territory once dominated by crypto exchanges. At the same time, crypto platforms are expanding into stock trading, blurring the line between the two industries and setting up a fight over who will control this emerging market. Some TradFi firms have got rid of the line altogether, taking stakes in their crypto-native rivals.
Exchanges hold liquidity
Crypto exchange operators provide the marketplaces where investors can buy and sell cryptocurrencies, while also offering other financial services, such as custody of assets, access to lending markets and derivative products. The industry's most popular names include Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Bybit, Bitget and Crypto.com - to name a few.
Binance, the largest exchange by trading volume, accounts for roughly 30% of activity across such platforms. Combined, crypto exchanges processed about $419bn in spot crypto transactions in June.
That concentration of traders, assets and market makers gives exchange operators an early advantage against financial firms disputing a slice of the tokenization revenue pie, according to Foresight Ventures partner Alice Lee. In an interview with Sandmark, Lee said that tokenized assets still need concentrated trading activity before they can expand into other markets. "Onchain demand is pretty weak right now," Lee said. "Most of the trading happens on the centralized exchanges."
Her view points to a tension at the centre of tokenization. Blockchain can make those assets easier to transfer and trade, but it cannot create liquidity.
Tokenized stocks, one of the use cases for tokenized assets, generated more than $20bn in cumulative trading volume by April, according to RWA.xyz data cited by Cornell University. But the market remains minuscule compared with conventional equities: its total cumulative volume was less than 2% of the $1.1tn traded on an average day in US stocks during 2025, according to Cboe Global Markets.
Foresight backs distribution
The vision that crypto exchanges would be the backbone of tokenized asset distribution, adoption and, therefore, liquidity is reshaping Foresight investment efforts.
The venture firm has been testing that thesis through its relationship with Bitget, one of its limited partners. Lee said Foresight advised the exchange on Reality, its tokenized asset platform, after Bitget saw demand for stock-linked products distributed through a third-party issuer.
"Institutions came to us saying that they want to deploy $10mn to $40mn," Lee said, pointing to deeper liquidity and clearer rebate structures, as well as the ability to use tokenized assets for lending, yield generation and margin trading within the same venue – capabilities that large exchanges are either building or already offer as part of their stack.
"They [traditional companies] cannot really bridge both the issuing side, and also the liquidity side, and the distribution side. That's why we believe that this is the right thing to do," she said, explaining that market makers need volume before committing capital, while investors are less likely to enter a market without reliable liquidity. "It's a chicken-and-egg problem."
If exchanges emerge as the key channel for tokenized asset adoption, they could capture revenue now earned by traditional brokers, trading desks, custodians and settlement providers, while gaining a larger role in the issuance and distribution of conventional financial products.
Citi expects the market for tokenized assets to reach $5.5tn by 2030 in its base case and as much as $8tn in a more bullish scenario, with public equities, US Treasuries and other liquid collateral leading adoption.
Wall Street moves in
Traditional exchanges are not waiting for crypto platforms to define the tokenized market.
"There are new actors, and there will be new actors that will embrace these technologies faster and can take share," Intercontinental Exchange Chief Executive Officer Jeff Sprecher said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call.
ICE, the NYSE's parent, is developing a tokenized-securities platform, but Sprecher does not expect blockchains to replace its existing trading engine. Instead, the company plans to keep matching orders on its conventional infrastructure while moving settlement and ownership records onto blockchain rails.
"Our model is to hook our conventional trading platforms to the chain," Sprecher said, arguing that ICE's speed and connections across the market mean "matching will still happen on conventional technology."
He described tokenization as "a rewiring of the movement of money and value" and predicted that markets would eventually include tokenized bank deposits and tokenized trades across ICE and rival venues.
Nasdaq is taking a more issuer-focused approach. Chief Executive Officer Adena Friedman said the company is working with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) to build the infrastructure for tokenized equities, while developing a design that gives issuers greater control over how their shares are represented and managed onchain.
"Were advancing the Nasdaq equity token design that takes modernization a step further by putting issuers at the center of ownership rights," Friedman said. Nasdaq expects the first benefits of the model in the first half of 2027.
The strategies allow established exchanges to adopt blockchain infrastructure without giving up control of trading, issuance or market access.
Some TradFi firms are also taking a faster route by investing directly in their crypto-native competitors. Nasdaq invested $50mn into Gemini during its September 2025 initial public offering. In March, NYSE-parent ICE invested an undisclosed amount in OKX and secured a board seat, while Deutsche Börse, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange operator, followed in April with a $200mn investment in Kraken's parent company.
Tokenization providers are becoming another overlap between the two markets. Backed by some of Wall Street's largest institutional investors, tokenization platform Securitize went public in July through a merger that valued the company at $1.25bn, with BlackRock, Morgan Stanley Investment Management and ARK Invest retaining their stakes rather than selling in the listing.
The lines blur
The convergence is moving in both directions. Crypto exchanges are no longer limiting themselves to tokenized versions of traditional assets, with several entering the brokerage business directly.
Kraken, for instance, began offering US-listed stocks and ETFs to some US customers in April 2025 through its securities arm. Coinbase started rolling out stock and ETF trading in December, allowing US users to buy traditional securities alongside crypto assets in the same app.
The moves illustrate the growing competition between crypto exchanges and online brokers, including Robinhood, which deepened its push into digital assets on 1 Jul by launching its own blockchain mainnet and expanding stock tokens trading.
Coinbase is also seeking to become a broader trading platform rather than remain dependent on crypto spot volumes. Its "Everything Exchange" strategy includes stocks, prediction markets and derivatives across digital and traditional assets.
"We've gone from a primarily spot-focused crypto platform into a place where you can now trade any asset class," Chief Executive Officer Brian Armstrong said during the company's first-quarter earnings call.
TradFi institutions, however, still retain the upper hand in licensing, issuance and access to underlying assets. "The biggest competition might come from the traditional finance companies," Lee said, citing the NYSE, Nasdaq, Fidelity and BlackRock among the new rivals of crypto exchanges.
