Binance has announced to launch the stock tokens of Microstrategy (MSTR), Apple (AAPL), and Microsoft (MSTF). The launch of the three additional stock tokens would make the total tokenized stock offering of Binance equal to five. The first stock token to go live on the exchange is MSTR today, followed by Apple on April 28 and Microsoft on April 30. The first stock to be traded on the cryptocurrency exchange was Tesla (TSLA) on April 12 followed by Coinbase (COIN) on April 15.
As the stock tokens were created in partnership with the investment group CM-Equity, the tokens are not available in areas restricted to CM-Equity like the US, mainland China, and Turkey. CM-Equity is also responsible for backing the stock tokens by portfolios of the underlying securities.
Binance’s new product, tradable stock tokens, offers traders the opportunity to trade tokenized fractions of stocks. Users can trade fractionalized units of stocks as low as one-hundredth of a stock. The stock tokens are used to track the performance of the underlying security. The stock tokens are traded against Binancestabelcoin (BUSD) and not against US Dollars.
The tokenized stocks have been under scrutiny of European regulators as the true nature of the product is argued. Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, BaFin, is worried that the tokenized stock may not be able to provide the required transparency. European Union regulators have also voiced their concerned over the new product. However, Binance has not let it affect its new product as it adds three new stock tokens to its offerings.
The launch of the new stock tokens and Binance’s expansion is because of its strong competition with the crypto derivatives platform, FTX, which had earlier launched its own stock tokens.
