From Wall Street to the Blockchain: The Evolution of Stocks

The stock market has always been a story of infrastructure that constantly evolves and grows.

What began as a small network of brokers trading securities on Wall Street has grown into one of the world's most sophisticated financial systems. Today, that system is entering another major transition: stocks are moving onchain.

From the earliest days of the New York Stock Exchange to ETFs, online brokerages, and crypto-native trading platforms, each financial era has made markets more accessible, faster, and more connected.

Tokenization is already proving to be the next step in this evolution.

Here’s a look at the beginning of stocks, where we are today, and what’s next.

The foundations of the modern U.S. stock market were laid in 1792.

On May 17, 1792, 24 brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement in New York, establishing rules for trading securities among themselves. It became the foundation of what would eventually become the New York Stock Exchange.

At the time, markets looked very different from today. Trading was conducted in person, information travelled slowly, and access to investments was largely limited to financial intermediaries and wealthy investors.

Over the following centuries, the market evolved alongside technology. The NYSE, for the first time, operated without a trading floor after COVID-19 forced a shift to electronic trading.

Since then, it has continually advanced into one of the world’s strongest and most sophisticated financial markets, shaped by technology at every stage of its development.

The underlying idea remained the same:

→ connect capital with assets and give investors a way to participate in economic growth.

One of the biggest developments in modern investing was the rise of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Instead of buying individual companies, investors could gain exposure to an entire basket of assets through a single security.

The first ETF was introduced in Canada in 1990: the Toronto Index Participation Units. In 1993, the US introduced its first U.S. ETF, the S&P 500 (SPY). Since their inception, ETFs have expanded to cover many different asset classes, including bonds, commodities, and crypto.

By July 2026, more than 17,600 ETFs and ETPs were listed worldwide, with global assets exceeding $23 trillion.

ETFs have made diversification easier and helped turn complex investment strategies into products that could be traded throughout the day, just like stocks.

Investors no longer needed to build every portfolio themselves. They could access indexes, sectors, commodities, bonds, and other strategies through increasingly accessible financial products.

And eventually, that same philosophy would begin appearing in crypto.

In 2009, Bitcoin introduced something fundamentally different: a financial asset that could move natively over the internet without relying on traditional financial rails.

Crypto markets developed around this idea of digital ownership and open, always-onchain.

Then came Decentralized Finance (DeFi), where assets could be traded, lent, borrowed, and composed together through smart contracts.

Crypto didn't replace stocks. It started to change the infrastructure around how markets operate.

As tokenization blurs the boundaries between traditional finance and internet-native finance, it is pushing traditional financial markets toward more open, always-on infrastructure, much like the 24/7 trading already possible with Bitcoin.

That is where tokenization enters the equation.

Today, a tokenized stock often represents economic exposure to a traditional security through a blockchain-based asset. Instead of the entire trading and settlement process happening through traditional financial infrastructure, parts of the lifecycle can move onchain. We expect stocks to be issued natively on blockchains in the future.

That can introduce several characteristics familiar to crypto markets:

The distinction is important: often a tokenized stock is not necessarily the same thing as directly owning the underlying equity. The legal structure, custody, redemption rights, and investor protections depend on the issuer and jurisdiction.

It’s also worth noting that this shift is gaining momentum at a national level.

South Korea unveiled a three-phase roadmap to tokenize stocks, bonds, and funds, beginning in February 2027, with its long-term vision moving securities and payments onchain, including stablecoin-based settlement.

On the other side of the world, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) is working closely with crypto exchange Kraken owner Payward to bring the top UK-listed stocks onchain.

It’s clear that traditional finance is now adopting 24-hour trading, tokenization, blockchain settlement, and digital wallets as part of this financial evolution.

Here’s who is driving the next wave of tokenization…

Tokenization is no longer confined to crypto-native startups.

Traditional financial platforms are increasingly experimenting with blockchain-based representations of stocks and funds.

Robinhood, for example, launched Stock Tokens that provide eligible investors outside the U.S. with economic exposure to stocks and ETFs through blockchain-based tokens. Robinhood currently lists more than 190 Stock Tokens linked to companies and ETFs.

Ondo is taking another approach, building infrastructure for tokenized stocks and ETFs that can be used across blockchain ecosystems. Its platform currently offers hundreds of tokenized securities to eligible non-U.S. investors, including individual stocks and ETFs.

Ondo has also expanded into tokenizing ETFs, including products from Franklin Templeton, while developing structures that connect traditional securities with blockchain-based distribution and DeFi infrastructure.

These developments point toward something bigger than simply putting a stock ticker on a blockchain.

They are part of a broader attempt to rebuild how financial assets are issued, distributed, traded, and settled.

Anchored launched its tokenized U.S. stock product in 2026, initially bringing major Nasdaq-listed equities and ETFs onchain through its infrastructure and integrations. The tokens are designed to be backed 1:1 by the underlying equities held through regulated brokerage infrastructure.

Anchored is building infrastructure around the entire RWA lifecycle:

That means a trader can access familiar companies while interacting with them through an increasingly crypto-native environment. That expansion took another step forward when Anchored brought its tokenized stocks to Arbitrum through Uniswap, creating a unique and frictionless path for trading tokenized stocks through one of the largest DeFi protocols.

Beyond individual equities, Anchored is also moving into tokenized funds, with three tokenized funds now live on Ethereum for eligible investors.

If stocks can move onchain, why stop at stocks?

Funds, ETFs, bonds, and eventually other capital-market products can potentially follow the same path.

The stock market has spent more than two centuries becoming faster, more accessible, and more efficient. Tokenization is another chapter in that process.

The question is no longer whether financial assets can exist onchain. They already do.

For investors, traders, and builders, this could create an entirely new market structure. From the trading floors of the New York Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange to today’s globally connected markets, each stage of evolution has expanded access and efficiency, making the transition toward onchain finance a logical next step.

The stock market has evolved before. Now, it's evolving again.

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