Binance Allows Users to Trade Tokenized Stocks Starting With Tesla
Cryptocurrency exchange Binance is allowing its users to buy fractions of companies’ shares with a new tokenized stock trading service, starting with Tesla.
- The crypto exchange announced Monday the launch of Binance Stock Tokens, zero-commission digital tokens that qualify holders for returns including dividends.
- As of 1:35 p.m. UTC (9:35 a.m. ET) April 12, users will be able to buy tokens representing fractions of actual Tesla shares, which trade at $677 a share at the time of writing.
- Users will be able to purchase tokens representing as little as one-hundredth of a Tesla share, with prices settled in Binance USD (BUSD).
- The exchange’s native crypto Binance Coin (BNB) has surged more than 25% in the last 24 hours, reaching an all-time high of $637.44. It is priced at $590.51 at press time. It's not immediately clear what is driving the price of the coin.
- It’s not the first tokenized stock play in crypto land: Terra Labs’ Mirror Protocol went live in December.
- But where Mirror uses synthetic stocks (or tokenized representations of actual equities), the Binance product is “backed by a depository portfolio of underlying securities” managed by an investment firm in Germany.
UPDATE (April 28, 20:42 UTC): Makes it more clear that Binance isn't offering the shares itself but tokens representing them.
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