Binance Relaunches Stock Tokens: Will the Tesla Futures Listing Trigger a New Rally?

Original Title: "Binance's 'Infiltration' into Stock Tokens: Will the Tesla Contract Launch Bring a New Round of Bull Market?"

Original Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

Binance announced that it will launch a Tesla (TSLA) perpetual contract on January 28, supporting up to 5 times leverage. This contract tracks the price of Tesla's common stock (NASDAQ stock code: TSLA).

This is Binance's first clear product reentry into the US stock market since closing its stock token service in July 2021. Behind the product transformation is a reflection of the crypto giant cautiously yet ambitiously probing the boundaries of traditional finance under high compliance walls.

A Fleeting Experiment with "Stock Tokens"

In April 2021, Binance launched stock tokens with Tesla as the first target, with the core narrative being to allow users to access US stock price fluctuations at a lower threshold and engage in fractional trading. In its external communication at the time, stock tokens were tokens that tracked the price performance of traditional financial stocks, backed by underlying physical stocks.

According to Binance's announcement, the minimum trading size of Tesla stock tokens on Binance is one-hundredth of buying or selling stock tokens, and each Tesla stock token on Binance represents one share of Tesla stock. Based on Tesla's stock price of $760 on the US stock market at the time, Binance investors could buy in at a minimum of $7.6. Tesla stock token trades against "TSLA/BUSD," priced, settled, and collateralized in BUSD. Users must undergo 2 levels of KYC (German users require 3 levels) and users from certain countries like China, the US, and Turkey are prohibited from trading.

At that time, Binance chose to partner with the German financial company CM Equity AG and the Switzerland-based tokenization company Digital Assets AG to develop the stock token listing and trading service. Interestingly, in October 2020, FTX launched its US stock token trading service with the same partners, CM-Equity AG and Digital Assets AG.

After Binance introduced stock tokens, regulatory reactions were swift and fierce. The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) took the lead in challenging it. The Financial Times reported that the FCA had intervened to investigate the operational model of the product and applicable regulations. The German financial regulatory authority BaFin subsequently announced that it reasonably suspected Binance of violating securities laws. In the eyes of regulators at the time, if an asset has the right to stock returns and dividends, whether it is dressed in blockchain attire or called a "token," it is essentially a security and must be subject to the strictest securities laws.

In this regulatory crackdown, Binance had to make compromises. On July 16, 2021, just three months after the product was launched, Binance announced the cessation of support for stock tokens and completely exited the business in October of the same year, seen as a painful defeat after DeFi's frontal assault on TradFi.

From a business and compliance perspective, the pressure that year had typical characteristics. Firstly, stock tokens span across multiple areas such as securities issuance, broker distribution, trading venues, and investor protection. A single platform finds it challenging to cover the requirements of different jurisdictions with the same set of licenses.

Secondly, investors in stock tokenization are prone to rights imagination. Once details such as voting rights, dividend rights, redemption mechanisms, custody arrangements are unclear, disputes and enforcement risks are amplified. Thirdly, at that time, global regulatory scrutiny of the crypto industry was at a sensitive stage. Once a platform extended its reach to traditional financial assets, regulatory scrutiny was often higher.

Regulatory Changes, Relaunching Stock Token Business

Today, five years later, the market has clearly undergone significant changes. The total market value of stock tokenization has exceeded $1 billion, growing over 50 times in the past year, with xStock accounting for over $600 million, holding a 58.3% market share; Ondo Global Markets' stock token market value on the BNB Chain has grown rapidly to over $50 million, collectively holding 39% of the market share with Ethereum.

Recently, the NYSE announced it would seek approval from regulators to allow companies to issue securities presented in digital token form. Unlike the NYSE's current traditional model of operating on weekdays and having night breaks, the new platform will offer "24/7" round-the-clock trading services. Additionally, the platform will support instant settlement and allow investors to use USD-pegged stablecoins to fund transactions.

According to Barron's, to support the NYSE ecosystem, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) is collaborating with banks including BNY Mellon and Citigroup to support its clearinghouse's tokenization deposit business.

Prior to this, against the backdrop of the Trump administration's shift to a more crypto-friendly policy, TradFi is actively incorporating DeFi's technological advantages.

As early as September 2025, Nasdaq had filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to allow investors to trade tokenized versions of stocks. In the broader asset management field, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation's subsidiary, the Depository Trust Company (DTC), has received a no-action letter from the SEC, approving it to offer real-world asset tokenization services in a controlled production environment. DTC is expected to launch this service in the latter half of 2026. JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, and State Street Bank have all launched tokenized money market fund projects, allowing clients to hold digital token representations of fund shares.

Binance Launches TSLA Perpetual Futures Contract, which, compared to the stock token of that year, is closer to a traditional sense of derivative exposure. For the platform, this path still narratively points towards bringing TradFi assets into the crypto space, but it is easier from a legal and regulatory perspective to place the product in the derivatives framework discussion, reducing direct confrontation on sensitive issues such as securities issuance and sales.

Will It Bring a New Round of Market Trends? Signal Significance Greater Than Fund Variability

From a market trading perspective, TSLA Perpetual Futures is more like a signal. Crypto trading platforms are still looking for new volume connected to traditional assets, especially in the more familiar derivatives track. Secondly, the narrative of tokenized stocks has not died out in the industry and is being taken over by more compliant entities.

The ultimate premium that the market will give, whether the crypto market will move out of an independent trend due to Binance's U.S. stock target return, depends on whether funds see it as a new risk carrier and whether regulations allow such products to spread to more regions, more targets, and more leverage levels.

From an advantage perspective, these products can introduce the volatility of traditional assets and event-driven narratives into the crypto space, improve trading options and capital efficiency, and provide more price anchors that can be used as collateral for on-chain assets. From a risk perspective, the perpetual contract mechanism itself also brings basis risks, funding rates, and liquidation risks in extreme volatility, and traders also face the compound risks of derivative microstructures.

Original Article Link