The CFD
industry has long owned a specific kind of retail trader: someone outside the
United States who wants access to U.S. stocks, gold, or macro assets without
the cost and paperwork of a traditional brokerage account. Crypto exchanges are
now competing for that exact user, and MEXC’s COO says the competition has
moved past the experimental phase.
“People
stop showing up because it’s new, and start showing up because it fits their
routine,” the Vugar Usi Zade told FinanceMagnates.com. “When you see
tokenized equities used alongside spot crypto as part of normal portfolio flow,
you treat it as a product line that needs consistent execution standards.”
The
exchange has now completed nine batches of tokenized U.S. stock listings
through its partnership with Ondo Finance since September 2025, covering
blue-chip equities
Equities
Equities can be characterized as stocks or shares in a company that investors can buy or sell. When you buy a stock, you are in essence buying an equity, becoming a partial owner of shares in a specific company or fund.However, equities do not pay a fixed interest rate, and as such are not considered guaranteed income. As such, equity markets are often associated with risk.When a company issues bonds, it’s taking loans from buyers. When a company offers shares, on the other hand, it’s selling pa
Equities can be characterized as stocks or shares in a company that investors can buy or sell. When you buy a stock, you are in essence buying an equity, becoming a partial owner of shares in a specific company or fund.However, equities do not pay a fixed interest rate, and as such are not considered guaranteed income. As such, equity markets are often associated with risk.When a company issues bonds, it’s taking loans from buyers. When a company offers shares, on the other hand, it’s selling pa
Read this Term, ETFs, and more recently, defense and energy names including
Lockheed Martin and ConocoPhillips.
The
underlying shares are held in regulated trust accounts and subject to quarterly
audits, according to the company. For MEXC, a platform that claims 40 million
users across 170 countries, Usi Zade said the program has graduated from
something worth testing into something that requires operational discipline.
“Since
September 2025, we’ve kept rolling out new batches with Ondo, and by the ninth
phase, you’re no longer testing demand in the abstract,” he said.
“You’re building inventory, liquidity habits, and user expectations.”
🚀 Today marks a meaningful new chapter as I join @MEXC_Official as Chief Operating Officer.
From my first Bitcoin transaction to leading global teams in crypto, the mission has always been the same: build open, fair, and human finance.
Read the full story on the blog →… pic.twitter.com/J2dNTMhAwg— Vugar Usi (@usithetalk) December 3, 2025
The CFD Comparison That
Won’t Go Away
Criticism
of tokenized equity products has not been quiet, and some of the sharpest
voices have come from within the CFD industry itself. The argument is familiar:
tokenized
stocks are essentially CFDs with a blockchain wrapper, offering synthetic
exposure under a different name. Usi Zade said that criticism deserves a more
careful answer than a flat denial.
“There’s
a real point buried in that criticism, and it’s the word ‘rights,'” he
said. “A lot of products called ‘tokenized stocks’ don’t give the holder
shareholder rights in the underlying issuer.”
He said the
more useful question is not “CFD versus not” but rather what the user
actually holds, what they don’t hold, and what the risks are. “The job for
exchanges is to be plainspoken about what the user holds, what they don’t hold,
and what the risks really are,” he said. “If the language is precise,
the conversation becomes more useful.”
That call
for precision is no longer just good advice, it is increasingly regulatory
expectation. The SEC’s joint staff statement issued on January 28, 2026
addressed exactly this question, drawing a distinction between issuer-sponsored
tokenized securities and what it described as third-party “linked securities”
that provide indirect exposure with additional counterparty layers.
The
guidance reiterated that tokenization does not change the underlying legal
analysis of an instrument, and that the same securities laws apply regardless
of the digital wrapper.
Usi Zade
said the statement matters. “It’s the kind of guidance the whole industry
should take seriously,” he told FinanceMagnates.com. “The SEC staff
statement is explicit that tokenization
Tokenization
Tokenization represents the process of substituting a sensitive data element with a non-sensitive equivalent, i.e. token, which bears no extrinsic or exploitable meaning or value. In essence, the rights to the ownership of an asset are converted into a digital token. Tokenization can be used to own an entire unit of an asset. For example, one token that represents the ownership of a piece of real estate or to split ownership of a single unity of an asset such as 200,000 tokens, each one represen
Tokenization represents the process of substituting a sensitive data element with a non-sensitive equivalent, i.e. token, which bears no extrinsic or exploitable meaning or value. In essence, the rights to the ownership of an asset are converted into a digital token. Tokenization can be used to own an entire unit of an asset. For example, one token that represents the ownership of a piece of real estate or to split ownership of a single unity of an asset such as 200,000 tokens, each one represen
Read this Term doesn’t change the underlying
analysis.”
From MEXC’s
side, he said the response is to treat legal structure as a product
requirement: be clear on who issues the token, what it represents, and what
rights it does or does not confer. He was direct about the alternative:
“Not leaning on vague wording that implies direct ownership when a product
is designed differently.”
MEXC
launched USDT-settled stock futures in August 2025, allowing retail and
institutional users to access tokenized U.S.
stock exposure through crypto-settled contracts, part of an early effort to test demand before
the Ondo partnership expanded the line significantly.
Where CFDs Still Hold
Structural Ground
The
interview surfaced something less commonly said from the crypto exchange side:
an acknowledgment that the traditional CFD model has real, durable advantages
in specific contexts.
“CFD
providers still have a structural edge where regulation and local distribution
are deeply embedded,” Usi Zade said. In many markets, he noted,
traditional brokers have spent years optimizing onboarding, payment rails, and
consumer trust within established regulatory frameworks – advantages that are
difficult to replicate quickly.
Coinbase and
Crypto.com have both pursued CFD licenses in recent periods, a move that signals
even well-capitalized crypto firms see value in operating inside the regulated
derivatives structure rather than trying to work around it.
Where the
advantage narrows, Usi Zade argued, is on time and convenience. “A big
part of the appeal of tokenized exposure inside a crypto venue is that users
don’t have to switch ‘systems’ to express a view,” he said. “If
someone wants to move from stablecoins to equity exposure and back again –
quickly, at odd hours – the classic separation between brokerage and crypto
starts to feel like an unnecessary distance.”
Gold, Silver, and the
Commodities Battle
Tokenized
equities are only part of the competitive picture. MEXC also offers tokenized
gold and silver perpetual futures backed by physical bullion, placing it in
direct proximity to commodity CFD providers that have long built retail
businesses on access to macro assets. Usi Zade described the user behavior
around those products as genuinely mixed.
“Some
traders use gold-linked exposure to calm down portfolio volatility when crypto
is noisy,” he said. “Others approach it as a high-beta trade when
momentum builds.” He noted that the choice of instrument matters: a
perpetual is a derivative on price, so even a trader operating from a defensive
intent can behave in ways that look speculative. “Safe-haven in retail
trading often translates into ‘hedge and adjust,’ not ‘buy and forget,'”
he said.
The broader
crypto industry has moved aggressively into commodities in 2026. Binance
launched round-the-clock perpetual contracts on silver as prices surged, while BingX reported
that record gold prices drove half of its $1 billion TradFi trading surge, with gold futures contracts
generating over $500 million in daily volume on some days.
Perps are where crypto market structure gets decided.@coingecko ’s latest data shows Binance at $13.6T in perpetuals volume, with OKX at $5.8T and MEXC close behind at $5.7T. That is not just scale. That is where liquidity, execution, and trader attention are concentrating.… https://t.co/QyZiES5F6G
— Vugar Usi (@usithetalk) March 10, 2026
Heavyweight Competition on
the Horizon
The
regulatory infrastructure underpinning all of this is changing fast. Nasdaq’s
proposed rule change to enable tokenized securities trading on-exchange,
combined with the CFTC’s moves to allow tokenized assets as collateral in
derivatives markets, are sharpening the legal definitions that exchanges on
both sides of the divide will have to work within.
“It
also invites heavyweight competition,” he said. “If traditional
venues can offer tokenized access with familiar brands and domestic compliance
strength, the bar rises.”
He pointed
to ICE – the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange – which is developing a
platform aimed at round-the-clock trading and on-chain settlement, pending regulatory approvals, as
evidence that the institutional finance world is moving toward the same
infrastructure rather than ceding the ground.
Tokenized
equities have grown roughly 30 times in market size recently, with experiments from Robinhood
and Nasdaq pushing the concept of 24/7 equity trading closer to mainstream
viability. The question of how that
parallel always-on equity market takes shape is one regulators and platforms are
working out simultaneously.
The Ostium
CEO made a related but starker argument in a recent
interview with FinanceMagnates.com, predicting that decentralized finance would disrupt the global CFD
broker market within five years. Usi Zade’s framing was more measured:
convergence is real, but obligations differ, and the gap does not close
automatically.
Two Interfaces, One
Infrastructure
On the
longer question of whether a crypto exchange and a retail brokerage eventually
become the same thing, Usi Zade was careful. “The line gets thinner, but
it still exists, because the obligations are different,” he said.
Brokerage carries a specific set of investor protections, disclosure
requirements, and custody responsibilities that do not transfer simply because
the interface resembles one.
What he
expects to converge is the back end. “Regulators are forcing more precise
language around tokenized securities models, and traditional exchanges are
actively exploring tokenized settlement and extended trading concepts,” he
said. “That pushes the industry toward shared rails, even if the front
ends remain distinct for a long time.”
The CFD
industry has long owned a specific kind of retail trader: someone outside the
United States who wants access to U.S. stocks, gold, or macro assets without
the cost and paperwork of a traditional brokerage account. Crypto exchanges are
now competing for that exact user, and MEXC’s COO says the competition has
moved past the experimental phase.
“People
stop showing up because it’s new, and start showing up because it fits their
routine,” the Vugar Usi Zade told FinanceMagnates.com. “When you see
tokenized equities used alongside spot crypto as part of normal portfolio flow,
you treat it as a product line that needs consistent execution standards.”
The
exchange has now completed nine batches of tokenized U.S. stock listings
through its partnership with Ondo Finance since September 2025, covering
blue-chip equities
Equities
Equities can be characterized as stocks or shares in a company that investors can buy or sell. When you buy a stock, you are in essence buying an equity, becoming a partial owner of shares in a specific company or fund.However, equities do not pay a fixed interest rate, and as such are not considered guaranteed income. As such, equity markets are often associated with risk.When a company issues bonds, it’s taking loans from buyers. When a company offers shares, on the other hand, it’s selling pa
Equities can be characterized as stocks or shares in a company that investors can buy or sell. When you buy a stock, you are in essence buying an equity, becoming a partial owner of shares in a specific company or fund.However, equities do not pay a fixed interest rate, and as such are not considered guaranteed income. As such, equity markets are often associated with risk.When a company issues bonds, it’s taking loans from buyers. When a company offers shares, on the other hand, it’s selling pa
Read this Term, ETFs, and more recently, defense and energy names including
Lockheed Martin and ConocoPhillips.
The
underlying shares are held in regulated trust accounts and subject to quarterly
audits, according to the company. For MEXC, a platform that claims 40 million
users across 170 countries, Usi Zade said the program has graduated from
something worth testing into something that requires operational discipline.
“Since
September 2025, we’ve kept rolling out new batches with Ondo, and by the ninth
phase, you’re no longer testing demand in the abstract,” he said.
“You’re building inventory, liquidity habits, and user expectations.”
🚀 Today marks a meaningful new chapter as I join @MEXC_Official as Chief Operating Officer.
From my first Bitcoin transaction to leading global teams in crypto, the mission has always been the same: build open, fair, and human finance.
Read the full story on the blog →… pic.twitter.com/J2dNTMhAwg— Vugar Usi (@usithetalk) December 3, 2025
The CFD Comparison That
Won’t Go Away
Criticism
of tokenized equity products has not been quiet, and some of the sharpest
voices have come from within the CFD industry itself. The argument is familiar:
tokenized
stocks are essentially CFDs with a blockchain wrapper, offering synthetic
exposure under a different name. Usi Zade said that criticism deserves a more
careful answer than a flat denial.
“There’s
a real point buried in that criticism, and it’s the word ‘rights,'” he
said. “A lot of products called ‘tokenized stocks’ don’t give the holder
shareholder rights in the underlying issuer.”
He said the
more useful question is not “CFD versus not” but rather what the user
actually holds, what they don’t hold, and what the risks are. “The job for
exchanges is to be plainspoken about what the user holds, what they don’t hold,
and what the risks really are,” he said. “If the language is precise,
the conversation becomes more useful.”
That call
for precision is no longer just good advice, it is increasingly regulatory
expectation. The SEC’s joint staff statement issued on January 28, 2026
addressed exactly this question, drawing a distinction between issuer-sponsored
tokenized securities and what it described as third-party “linked securities”
that provide indirect exposure with additional counterparty layers.
The
guidance reiterated that tokenization does not change the underlying legal
analysis of an instrument, and that the same securities laws apply regardless
of the digital wrapper.
Usi Zade
said the statement matters. “It’s the kind of guidance the whole industry
should take seriously,” he told FinanceMagnates.com. “The SEC staff
statement is explicit that tokenization
Tokenization
Tokenization represents the process of substituting a sensitive data element with a non-sensitive equivalent, i.e. token, which bears no extrinsic or exploitable meaning or value. In essence, the rights to the ownership of an asset are converted into a digital token. Tokenization can be used to own an entire unit of an asset. For example, one token that represents the ownership of a piece of real estate or to split ownership of a single unity of an asset such as 200,000 tokens, each one represen
Tokenization represents the process of substituting a sensitive data element with a non-sensitive equivalent, i.e. token, which bears no extrinsic or exploitable meaning or value. In essence, the rights to the ownership of an asset are converted into a digital token. Tokenization can be used to own an entire unit of an asset. For example, one token that represents the ownership of a piece of real estate or to split ownership of a single unity of an asset such as 200,000 tokens, each one represen
Read this Term doesn’t change the underlying
analysis.”
From MEXC’s
side, he said the response is to treat legal structure as a product
requirement: be clear on who issues the token, what it represents, and what
rights it does or does not confer. He was direct about the alternative:
“Not leaning on vague wording that implies direct ownership when a product
is designed differently.”
MEXC
launched USDT-settled stock futures in August 2025, allowing retail and
institutional users to access tokenized U.S.
stock exposure through crypto-settled contracts, part of an early effort to test demand before
the Ondo partnership expanded the line significantly.
Where CFDs Still Hold
Structural Ground
The
interview surfaced something less commonly said from the crypto exchange side:
an acknowledgment that the traditional CFD model has real, durable advantages
in specific contexts.
“CFD
providers still have a structural edge where regulation and local distribution
are deeply embedded,” Usi Zade said. In many markets, he noted,
traditional brokers have spent years optimizing onboarding, payment rails, and
consumer trust within established regulatory frameworks – advantages that are
difficult to replicate quickly.
Coinbase and
Crypto.com have both pursued CFD licenses in recent periods, a move that signals
even well-capitalized crypto firms see value in operating inside the regulated
derivatives structure rather than trying to work around it.
Where the
advantage narrows, Usi Zade argued, is on time and convenience. “A big
part of the appeal of tokenized exposure inside a crypto venue is that users
don’t have to switch ‘systems’ to express a view,” he said. “If
someone wants to move from stablecoins to equity exposure and back again –
quickly, at odd hours – the classic separation between brokerage and crypto
starts to feel like an unnecessary distance.”
Gold, Silver, and the
Commodities Battle
Tokenized
equities are only part of the competitive picture. MEXC also offers tokenized
gold and silver perpetual futures backed by physical bullion, placing it in
direct proximity to commodity CFD providers that have long built retail
businesses on access to macro assets. Usi Zade described the user behavior
around those products as genuinely mixed.
“Some
traders use gold-linked exposure to calm down portfolio volatility when crypto
is noisy,” he said. “Others approach it as a high-beta trade when
momentum builds.” He noted that the choice of instrument matters: a
perpetual is a derivative on price, so even a trader operating from a defensive
intent can behave in ways that look speculative. “Safe-haven in retail
trading often translates into ‘hedge and adjust,’ not ‘buy and forget,'”
he said.
The broader
crypto industry has moved aggressively into commodities in 2026. Binance
launched round-the-clock perpetual contracts on silver as prices surged, while BingX reported
that record gold prices drove half of its $1 billion TradFi trading surge, with gold futures contracts
generating over $500 million in daily volume on some days.
Perps are where crypto market structure gets decided.@coingecko ’s latest data shows Binance at $13.6T in perpetuals volume, with OKX at $5.8T and MEXC close behind at $5.7T. That is not just scale. That is where liquidity, execution, and trader attention are concentrating.… https://t.co/QyZiES5F6G
— Vugar Usi (@usithetalk) March 10, 2026
Heavyweight Competition on
the Horizon
The
regulatory infrastructure underpinning all of this is changing fast. Nasdaq’s
proposed rule change to enable tokenized securities trading on-exchange,
combined with the CFTC’s moves to allow tokenized assets as collateral in
derivatives markets, are sharpening the legal definitions that exchanges on
both sides of the divide will have to work within.
“It
also invites heavyweight competition,” he said. “If traditional
venues can offer tokenized access with familiar brands and domestic compliance
strength, the bar rises.”
He pointed
to ICE – the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange – which is developing a
platform aimed at round-the-clock trading and on-chain settlement, pending regulatory approvals, as
evidence that the institutional finance world is moving toward the same
infrastructure rather than ceding the ground.
Tokenized
equities have grown roughly 30 times in market size recently, with experiments from Robinhood
and Nasdaq pushing the concept of 24/7 equity trading closer to mainstream
viability. The question of how that
parallel always-on equity market takes shape is one regulators and platforms are
working out simultaneously.
The Ostium
CEO made a related but starker argument in a recent
interview with FinanceMagnates.com, predicting that decentralized finance would disrupt the global CFD
broker market within five years. Usi Zade’s framing was more measured:
convergence is real, but obligations differ, and the gap does not close
automatically.
Two Interfaces, One
Infrastructure
On the
longer question of whether a crypto exchange and a retail brokerage eventually
become the same thing, Usi Zade was careful. “The line gets thinner, but
it still exists, because the obligations are different,” he said.
Brokerage carries a specific set of investor protections, disclosure
requirements, and custody responsibilities that do not transfer simply because
the interface resembles one.
What he
expects to converge is the back end. “Regulators are forcing more precise
language around tokenized securities models, and traditional exchanges are
actively exploring tokenized settlement and extended trading concepts,” he
said. “That pushes the industry toward shared rails, even if the front
ends remain distinct for a long time.”