In 2026, the cryptocurrency platform collectively began to shift its focus to the U.S. stock market.

On Friday evening last week, SpaceX went public on the U.S. stock market, almost taking this sentiment to a new high. As one of the most watched global tech companies, SpaceX's IPO was not only a capital market event but also a global retail-oriented "gateway to the U.S. stock market" stress test.

On one side was the extremely high market enthusiasm. SpaceX's first-day trading performance was strong, with the stock price significantly rising above the offering price, and discussions surrounding it quickly spread from traditional brokerages and financial media to the crypto community. On the other side, many investors had a more direct experience gap: some platforms had vigorously promoted participation in the SpaceX IPO, but in the end, did not actually allocate shares to users, leading to only refunds.

In fact, this case is very illustrative of a few things: the U.S. stock market business conducted by crypto platforms is essentially a reflection of U.S. stocks rather than real U.S. stocks. It is in this context that breaking down and analyzing how BIT operates as a professional U.S. stock platform holds great practical significance.

BIT is not a newly emerged U.S. stock trading platform. Its predecessor was Matrixport, co-founded by the former "Mining Magnate" Wu Jihan. In February 2026, BIT launched its U.S. stock trading service; by mid-May, about 100 days after BIT's U.S. stock business went live, user assets under management (AUM) had already exceeded $200 million.

The biggest feature of BIT's U.S. stock product is that users trade real U.S. stocks.

This means that in the fund transfer process, BIT is more aligned with the actual needs of both crypto and U.S. stock users. Users can deposit quickly with stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, achieving 24/7, near-instant settlement; they can also choose traditional wire transfer settlement; and if they have an overseas bank account, they can directly recharge in U.S. dollars via bank wire transfer.

More notably, BIT also supports stock transfers. This means that users who already hold U.S. stocks with other brokerages do not necessarily need to sell their stocks, withdraw funds, and buy again but can directly transfer their existing U.S. stock positions to BIT.

How much dividend have you missed out on by buying synthetic U.S. stocks?

Although cryptocurrency trading platforms that now offer U.S. stocks can generally solve the issue of "past crypto users entering the U.S. stock market not smoothly," a new problem arises. In reality, many users do not know that on various major crypto platforms, what they have bought is more synthetic U.S. stocks rather than real U.S. stocks.

The distinction between synthetic and actual US stocks is not always obvious and may not be easy to discern on a trading interface. You may see symbols like NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, all showing a candlestick chart, a buy button, and your account's profit and loss.

During day trading, this difference may not be glaring. As long as the price is right, there is enough liquidity, and the orders are filled, many people may not question what underlies the asset. However, once a user's objective shifts from "making a quick trade" to "allocating a specific asset class," this difference becomes significant.

Because holding actual stocks means the user is engaging not just with a pricing system but with more rights. This includes dividends, voting rights, corporate actions, securities custody, settlement, and, in extreme cases, investor protection. A price contract can replicate price movements, but it is challenging to fully replicate the rights associated with holding a stock as a security.

Therefore, what you buy as NVIDIA on most crypto trading platforms does not truly constitute "owning NVIDIA stock."

This is precisely the most debated turning point when crypto platforms enter the US stock market in 2026.

One of the most tangible examples is dividends.

Stocks are not just about price fluctuations. For many companies and ETFs, dividends are a significant part of the long-term returns. According to Fidelity's data, dividends contribute approximately 40% to the total return of the S&P 500 over the long term.

Let's use $1 million to calculate specific examples, which will make it more illustrative.

For instance, some high dividend-yield US stocks. Altria has an annualized dividend per share of about $4.24. Roughly calculated based on early June 2026 prices, holding $1 million for a year would yield approximately $58,700 in pre-tax cash dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 5.87%. Verizon's latest quarterly dividend is annualized at around $2.83 per share. Similarly, holding $1 million for a year would yield approximately $62,400 in pre-tax cash dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 6.24%. Realty Income, a monthly dividend-paying company, has an annualized dividend per share of around $3.246. Holding $1 million for a year would yield approximately $53,000 in pre-tax cash dividends, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 5.3%, and these dividends are distributed monthly.

These examples only cover the results based on dividends.

If these dividends are not withdrawn but reinvested into the same stock, the returns from compounding would be even higher. Roughly calculated based on pre-tax, unchanged stock price, constant dividends, and immediate reinvestment upon receipt, investing $1 million in Altria with dividend reinvestment would yield approximately $60,000 in returns after one year, corresponding to a return rate of approximately 6%; Reinvesting Verizon's quarterly dividends would yield approximately $63,900 in returns after one year, corresponding to a return rate of about 6.39%; Due to the monthly dividend distribution, Realty Income would yield approximately $54,300 in returns after one year, corresponding to a return rate of about 5.43%.

Even when switching to more familiar tech stocks, the dividend yield is not as high as high dividend stocks, but the difference still exists. NVIDIA is now more like a growth stock, with a low dividend yield. Holding $1 million for a year, the pre-tax dividend is about $4,900, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 0.49%; Microsoft is a bit more mature. Holding $1 million for a year, the pre-tax dividend is about $8,700, corresponding to an annual dividend yield of about 0.87%. These numbers may not be as eye-catching as high dividend stocks, but they are still part of the real holding return.

(It should be noted that different platforms may use different methodologies when displaying dividend yield. Some platforms use Dividend Yield, which is calculated by dividing the current or latest dividend by the stock price; some platforms use Dividend Yield TTM, which is the actual dividends over the past 12 months divided by the current stock price. Therefore, for the same stock, the dividend yield seen on different platforms may vary. The above calculation is mainly to illustrate the magnitude of cash flow, using a rough calculation methodology based on the current dividend level annualized.)

For many funds that lean towards asset allocation, the attractiveness of these stocks lies not only in the stock price, especially when the fund size reaches $1 million, $10 million, or even higher, dividends are no longer just "small change" but a very generous continuous cash flow.

This is also the most easily overlooked difference between price mapping and the real asset path.

If the user holds real stocks in a securities account, dividends can enter the asset portfolio through company actions and the brokerage account; if the user buys tokenized stocks, CFDs, or some kind of price mapping product, how dividends are reflected depends entirely on the product's rules. Some products may reflect the economic effects of dividends through net asset value adjustments, price corrections, or other mechanisms, but this is not the same as receiving cash dividends in a shareholder account.

In addition to dividends, another easily overlooked difference is transfers.

Many US stock products on CEXs are essentially a kind of price exposure provided within the platform. Users can buy, sell, and see profit and loss changes close to the US stock price, but these products usually do not support transferring positions to other brokerages or custody accounts. In other words, if a user wants to leave this platform, most of the time, they can only sell first, withdraw the funds, then buy back on another platform.

This is not the same as the holdings in a real US stock account. Real stocks can be transferred because they have clear securities accounts, custody relationships, and settlement chains. Assets are not just a string of bookkeeping numbers existing within a platform but can migrate within a compliant securities system.

BIT supports off-chain transfers, and the core reason lies here: its US stock product is not simply price-pegged but is based on real US stock assets and the corresponding securities custody architecture. Therefore, users hold not just a price contract that can only be traded within the platform, but a US stock position with more complete asset attributes.

This difference may not be apparent during intraday trading but is crucial for long-term allocators. The larger the fund size and the longer the holding period, the more users need to care about one thing: whether this asset can leave the platform, enter another custody system, and be migrated and managed like a real securities asset.

Naturally, the more comprehensive the rights, the higher the platform requirements.

Behind the "Stage," BIT's Specific Mechanism

According to BIT's public information, its US stock business does not turn stocks into internal price contracts but allows users to access the US stock securities trading and clearing system through Matrix Gelephu as well as licensed US broker-dealers and clearing partners. The information disclosed by BIT mentions US broker-dealer/clearing partners such as RQD Clearing, Atomic Vaults Securities, and also reveals the DTC off-chain transfer path.

Breaking down US stock trading into its specific operational mode, the most core infrastructure is called DTCC.

DTCC is not a name that ordinary users encounter daily, but almost every post-trade process of a US securities transaction cannot escape its subsidiary system. DTC is responsible for securities central custody. Put simply, US stocks do not physically move between buyers and sellers like paper certificates but are transferred within the DTC system through electronic bookkeeping. According to DTCC's June 2025 disclosure, DTC's custodied assets have surpassed $100 trillion.

NSCC is responsible for clearing. It processes a significant amount of broker-to-broker transactions for stocks, ETFs, corporate bonds, municipal bonds, ADRs, and more. DTCC's 2024 annual report shows that NSCC's average daily processed transaction amount reaches $22.19 trillion. More importantly, NSCC, through multilateral net settlement, compresses a large number of buy and sell orders in the market into fewer funds and securities settlement obligations. DTCC itself discloses that NSCC can reduce approximately 98% of the required payment exchanges on average each day.

The key mechanism here is called CCP novation. Originally, a transaction involved the buyer and seller bearing each other's counterparty risk: the buyer worried that the seller might not deliver the stock, and the seller worried that the buyer might not pay. When entering the NSCC's central clearing system, the NSCC becomes the central counterparty in the middle, and the legal relationship changes from "buyer to seller" to "buyer to NSCC, NSCC to seller." In other words, NSCC stands in the middle, transforming countless bilateral credit risks in the market into a more standardized and manageable settlement risk.

This is why the US stock market can handle such a huge trading volume.

The OCC is primarily responsible for clearing options and other derivative products, while the FICC is responsible for clearing fixed-income products such as US Treasuries, corporate bonds, and MBS. For regular stock trading, users may not directly feel the presence of the OCC and FICC, but they together form the backend infrastructure of the US capital market. The front end is a buy button, while the backend is actually a well-defined set of financial machinery.

For crypto platforms, entering this system is like learning a new language.

What crypto platforms are familiar with are wallets, matching engines, on-chain addresses, perpetual contracts, funding rates, and on-platform accounting; what the US stock market is familiar with are broker-dealers, clearing brokers, DTC, NSCC, SIPC, account structures, corporate actions, and clearing and settlement.

Both systems deal with assets and transactions, but the underlying logic is different. The former is more like a real-time ledger, while the latter is more like a property rights system built on legal frameworks, accounts, and intermediaries.

Therefore, the difficulty of integrating with the real US stock market is not "whether there is market data" or "whether a buy button can be created," but how platforms can connect to the broker and clearing systems.

In the traditional securities market, there are several ways for brokerage firms to plug into the clearing process. The first is self-clearing, where the broker itself becomes a clearing member and handles the back-end of transactions, requiring significant capital, system, compliance, and risk management capabilities. The second is a fully disclosed introducing broker, where the introducing broker handles the client and the front end, while the clearing broker opens a separate disclosed account for each client to handle custody and clearing. The third is an omnibus introducing broker, where the platform or introducing broker uses an omnibus account structure at the clearing broker, and the underlying client records are maintained by the introducing party. The fourth is DVP/RVP, which stands for delivery versus payment / receive versus payment, more commonly used for securities settlement arrangements between institutional clients and custodian banks.

For a crypto-native platform, direct self-clearing is usually not the most realistic first step. A more feasible path is to leverage the mature brokerages and clearing infrastructure of the U.S. securities market to connect user onboarding, securities accounts, trade execution, and settlement custody. In other words, it's not about recreating a U.S. stock market from scratch but about aligning crypto users with the existing financial rails of the U.S. stock market.

That's also why, in the current phase where trading platforms collectively handle "U.S. stock flow," compliance and clearing have become the most important parts.

For the average user, the specific mechanisms behind these "stages" may not necessarily be perceived. What users first see may still be whether they can buy, how fast the transactions settle, what the fees are, and how user-friendly the app is.

However, as stocks transition from short-term trading targets to long-term asset allocation, the legitimacy of the mechanisms becomes crucial.

Because when holding a stock for the long term, users care not only about how much it has gained today but also whether it is truly their asset, how dividends and corporate actions are handled, where the securities account is, who performs the custody and settlement, and what mechanisms can protect the assets in extreme scenarios.

This is also at the core of BIT's decision-making regarding its U.S. stock products: it genuinely aims to make U.S. stocks part of a crypto user's asset allocation, rather than another price game that allows leveraging for speculation.

From Matrixport to BIT: A "Genetic Continuation"

"When we were still preparing the product at the end of last year, we made a very firm decision. This choice actually stems from the company's 7-year history of serving institutions and high-net-worth clients, originating from a value orientation towards long-termism."

As Elio Cui, Head of BIT Brokerage Business, mentioned at a recent roundtable meeting, BIT's choice of such a product line is deeply intertwined with its past corporate DNA.

If we only look at this year's launch of the U.S. stock business, BIT could easily be seen as a new platform that suddenly entered the consumer market. However, if we extend the timeline a bit, the logic becomes much clearer. BIT is a new brand following the rebranding of Matrixport, which since 2019 has long served institutional and high-net-worth clients, with activities covering custody, trading, asset and wealth management, liquidity and financing, RWA, and other areas.

Currently, BIT manages assets exceeding $6 billion, with a monthly trading volume of over $7 billion, cumulative interest payments to customers exceeding $2 billion, a valuation exceeding $1 billion, and has been selected in the "2024 Hurun Global Unicorn List" and "2025 Singapore FinTech Unicorn List."

What is more well-known is that BIT's co-founder and chairman, Wu Jihan, is also the CEO and chairman of Bitdeer.

BIT is not a typical traffic-driven trading platform.

In the past, its clients were more institutions, professional investors, and high-net-worth individuals. This type of client often has different requirements for the product compared to retail traders. They certainly care about returns, but they are more concerned about where the assets are, who is custodian, how risks are mitigated, who the counterparty is, whether the account structure is clear, and if compliance boundaries can be clearly articulated.

Large clients are not easily swayed by the phrase "high returns." What they care about more is whether issues can be traced back, asset ownership can be confirmed, and underlying processes can be explained. For them, being slow is not a flaw. Many times, slowness itself is part of risk control.

This is the product philosophy behind BIT's U.S. stock business.

If a company's DNA is in matching, leverage, volume, and trading activity, when entering the U.S. stock market, it will naturally choose the lighter path: turning U.S. stocks into a product with a fast-trading price. This makes it more like a trading platform and also easier to generate short-term trading volume.

However, if a company's capabilities come more from institutional financial services, when entering the U.S. stock market, the first consideration is not just "how to get users to trade," but "how should this asset be held in the first place."

These two approaches are not absolutely superior or inferior, just catering to different service demands.

Trading-oriented users seek speed, volatility, and liquidity. Allocation-oriented users seek clarity, stability, and asset chain-of-custody.

U.S. stocks are particularly suitable for understanding from this perspective. The equity of U.S. listed companies is an asset composed of the company's profits, cash flow, governance structure, and shareholders' equity. For long-term allocators, buying a stock is not just about today and tomorrow's price movements, but about acquiring a portion of the value this company will create in the future.

In the crypto market, platforms excel at securitizing all assets. BTC can be traded, ETH can be traded, as well as gold, U.S. stocks, indices, and macro events. This capability is strong, allowing global funds to more quickly access various asset prices. However, it also has a side effect: prices are amplified, and rights are weakened.

BIT's goal is to bring back the element of rights.

This also explains why their U.S. stock business focuses on "real holdings," "shareholder equity," and "direct connection to brokers." It is not about creating another high-volatility trading venue but rather about enabling stablecoin users to smoothly enter the traditional market with the most mature and mainstream type of asset.

Slow is Fast

In the crypto industry, fast is often considered a virtue. A new narrative emerges, platforms need to be fast; a new asset gains popularity, listings need to be fast; users want in and out quickly, and the market rewards speed, volatility, and responsiveness. Hundredfold, thousandfold, ten-thousandfold, fast, accurate, ruthless—this is the industry's most familiar language.

Therefore, when a crypto platform says it aims to offer real US stocks, a real securities account, a real clearing system, it doesn't sound all that exciting.

For a crypto platform, the fastest approach is, of course, to enable price exposure. By integrating US stock prices, creating trading pairs, tokens, or contracts, the product can quickly go live. Users are already accustomed to spot, perpetual, leverage, funding rates, and 24/7 trading on trading platforms, so this path feels natural and is the easiest way to generate volume quickly.

However, financial products ultimately need to focus on user experience, especially during critical moments.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the SpaceX IPO night is a prime example. When a hot IPO is on the horizon, many platforms hype up the event beforehand, and users invest time, attention, and even funds while awaiting the outcome. But if they ultimately don't receive any shares and only get a refund, users not only lose out on a subscription opportunity but also incur a time cost and opportunity cost during the waiting period. The market does not pause because users are waiting; the actual trading window is often just a few hours.

This is also why stability, reliability, and executability are more important than merely appearing fast.

Compared to loudly advertising IPO subscriptions only to disappoint investors in the end, BIT's approach seems more like steadily offering users a reliable opportunity. On the SpaceX IPO night, the BIT system ran smoothly, allowing users to participate in pre-market and regular trading using a real US stock trading gateway; many investors who bought in pre-market seized the opportunity brought by the first-day price discovery as a result.

In an industry that values speed, slowing down to focus on account setup, clearing, custody, compliance, and the path to real assets may not seem as glamorous. However, many truly important aspects in finance are not achieved through posters and marketing slogans but rather through details such as order execution, asset confirmation, system reliability under pressure, and whether users can actively participate in the market during the window of opportunity.

The bigger the investment, the less speed matters; the longer the hold, the more than just the ROI screenshot matters. Institutions and high-net-worth clients are genuinely concerned about where the assets are, how rights are confirmed, how risks are isolated, and whether issues can be traced back.

This may be the true path that the BIT U.S. stock business wants to express: not to create a U.S. stock price entry in the fastest way possible, but to bring stablecoin users into the real U.S. stock asset system in a more solid way.

Slow is fast.

Disclaimer: This material is for general information and market education purposes only, does not constitute any investment advice, nor does it constitute an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any securities, products, platforms, or services. U.S. stock investment involves risks such as market, liquidity, custody, settlement, etc. Investors should carefully evaluate their own situation and seek professional advice when necessary.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia