Hot on the heels of Galaxy’s public listing in May, the crypto firm has teamed up with Superstate to tokenize its stock. The team-up will tokenize Galaxy Digital Class A Common Stock, and not just create a wrapper or synthetic models without issuer involvement, Galaxy and Superstate said.
“This is the first instance of a Nasdaq-listed company being tokenised on a major public blockchain,” said Robert Leshner, CEO of Superstate. “When tokens change hands, the registered shareholder list of Galaxy updates in real-time.” GLXY shares can be minted using Superstate’s Opening Bell platform on Solana and Ethereum. The initiative comes as tokenised stock has become one of the hottest trends to emerge in the crypto industry this year.
Firms like fintech giant Robinhood and crypto exchange Kraken have made waves by launching services that allow customers to trade tokenized shares. While those firms have often portrayed the initiatives as a way to democratize financial markets by giving users who would normally not have access to those stocks, the push has also faced controversy.
The firms whose stock has been tokenized haven’t always given the issuers the green light to do so. That was seemingly the case in June when Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, announced a giveaway of tokenized OpenAI and SpaceX stock. Just days later, OpenAI slammed the stunt on X, saying it did “not endorse it,” which prompted Tenev to concede that “while it is true that they aren’t technically equity, [the] tokens effectively give retail exposure to these private assets.”
