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."Tokenized Stocks Are No Longer a TestThe 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, 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, 2025The CFD Comparison That Won't Go AwayCriticism 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 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 GroundThe 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 BattleTokenized 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, 2026Heavyweight Competition on the HorizonThe 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 InfrastructureOn 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." This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.

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