Innovators in the crypto space have created tokenized versions of market-leading stocks and begun to trade them on blockchains.
What Happened: According to a report from Bloomberg, decentralized finance or DeFi protocols have built synthetic equities that track stocks like Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN).
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These synthetic tokens will reflect the prices of the equities they track in real-time without the need to buy or sell the underlying asset itself.
Two DeFi projects that have built synthetic assets are Mirror Protocol (CRYPTO: MIR) and Synthetix (CRYPTO: SNX).
“Since these synthetic products are not regulated and not traded on a national securities exchange, I would think that the SEC would take issue with them,” said Joseph Saluzzi, the co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading.
What Else: However, according to Do Kwon, CEO of Terraform Labs that created Mirror Protocol, there is no time to wait for regulatory clarity on this front.
“It’s better to move fast and break things,” he told Bloomberg via email, adding, “Waiting for fragmented regulatory frameworks to crystallize before innovating is counterintuitive.”
Read also: Crypto Community Accuses Former Google Tech Lead Of Scamming Investors As Million Token Crashes
A comparison between the Mirrored Apple token (CRYPTO: mAAPL) and the real stock at press time revealed a difference of $0.43, where the Mirrored Apple token traded at slightly higher than its original counterpart.
Price Action: At press time, mAAPL’s daily trading volume was up 233%, but at $251,249, it was still barely a fraction of Apple’s real trading volume, which exceeded $55 million.