Nasdaq Taps Gemini to Help it Enter its Tokenization Era

By Dawn Pennington

The crypto and tradfi worlds continue to drift closer together.

This week, we learned the Nasdaq is working with regulators to offer tokenized securities on its stock exchange. 

Per its press release:

“Nasdaq has proposed the ability for member firms and investors to tokenize the equity securities and exchange traded products (ETPs) that they trade on the Nasdaq Stock Market, with the goal of advancing financial innovation while maintaining stability, fairness and investor protections.”

BlackRock (BLK) followed that up with its own news. It plans to spend $2 trillion to tokenize its own ETFs. Its tokenized money-market fund BUIDL has grown to $2 billion over the past year.

But Nasdaq had more news. It invested $50 million in Gemini Space Station (GEMI) before its Friday IPO on … you guessed it … the Nasdaq. 

The Winklevoss Twins’ crypto exchange offers a U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin, along with digital asset custody, staking and even a credit card that offers crypto rewards.

According to IBD:

“As part of the deal, Gemini will give Nasdaq's clients the ability to custody and stake crypto assets. Gemini will become a reseller for Nasdaq's Calypso Solution, which will give its institutional customers access to collateral management solutions.”

I asked the Weiss Ratings tradfi team what they make of these developments.

Everyone agreed that tokenizing the markets can have some practical advantages.

First, it takes us a step closer to having a 24-hour marketplace, like cryptos currently enjoy. 

With tokenization, securities would trade on the blockchain as digital tokens. And just about anyone can trade those, no matter where they are in the world. 

Second, this could allow for trading by just about anyone, from just about anywhere in the world.

Currently it can be hard, if not practically impossible to invest in stocks not available to you on your local exchanges. Being able to trade on the Nasdaq, for example, would be preferable to working with overseas brokers. 

Third, we could see traditionally illiquid assets become tradable.

With more people being able to access securities in real time, we could see trading volume tick higher. Having more buyers and sellers could leader to fairer prices. Those assets could include shares of private companies, which Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, addressed at Bitcoin2025 earlier this year.

Nilus Mattive, our Safe Money Report editor who just led his subscribers to some big crypto ETF gains (296% and 131%!) this past Friday, is the person I call when I need a devil’s advocate.

Sure enough, he came through. 

“I think the best use cases are real estate related. Other than the 24/7 global aspect, tokenizing equities could bring an improvement on things we already do quite well. But it might also bring some new complications.”

He brings up a good point. Some of the benefits of tokenization is the ability to buy fractional shares of pricier assets … instant settlement of trades … and digital representations of assets.

Which, if you have the right brokerage, you already get a lot of that. And, one could argue, everything in our accounts is a digital representation. 

As always, time will tell. 

But Galaxy Research says tokenized equities could represent a $190 trillion market in the next two decades. 

The Nasdaq’s proposal currently sits with the SEC. It’s expected to make a decision within one year of the proposal’s filing date. 

So, it could be as early as Q3 2026 when the Nasdaq can start integrating blockchain technology into its current infrastructure.

That said, with U.S. government officials already signaling their crypto friendliness via:

• The Senate’s July passage of the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act … 

• The market-structure CLARITY Act, along with a measure to ban central bank digital currencies …

• Along with the First Family’s own crypto holdings and ventures …

We could see the Nasdaq enter its tokenization era even sooner.

In the meantime, speaking of crypto ventures, here’s what your Weiss crypto experts brought you in front of “Fed week.”

There are a lot of actionable ideas in here.

So be sure to check them all out before the big day on Wednesday!

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To your health and wealth,

Dawn Pennington