Five Years After GameStop: What Does Today’s Stock Market Need?
Five Years After GameStop: What Does Today’s Stock Market Need?
On January 28, 2021, millions of retail traders learned an uncomfortable truth about U.S. equities: you can “own” a stock in an app, but you still depend on layers of intermediaries—brokers, clearing firms, and settlement infrastructure—to actually complete the trade. When several brokerages restricted buying (while still allowing selling) in highly volatile “meme stocks,” the event became a lasting symbol of market structure fragility and asymmetric access—issues later analyzed in the SEC Staff Report on Equity and Options Market Structure Conditions in Early 2021.
Fast-forward to January 28, 2026—the five-year anniversary. The “GameStop moment” is no longer just a cultural memory; it’s a stress-test case for what capital markets still lack, and why blockchain-based finance keeps resurfacing in serious conversations about market plumbing.
This article focuses on one question: what does the stock market need now—and what can crypto and blockchain realistically contribute?
1) The core lesson: settlement speed is not a UX feature—it’s systemic risk
The public narrative in 2021 centered on “turning off the buy button.” Under the hood, the deeper driver was a risk-management chain reaction: extreme volatility + concentrated positions + a multi-day settlement cycle can produce sudden collateral demands on brokers.
Regulators did respond. The U.S. moved from T+2 to T+1 settlement on May 28, 2024, explicitly framing it as a resilience upgrade to reduce time-to-settle risk (SEC statement on T+1 implementation; see also Investor.gov’s T+1 bulletin).
That’s progress—but it’s also a reminder: even after T+1, equity settlement is still not natively “internet-speed.” Markets are faster than ever at execution, but ownership transfer and final cash movement remain constrained by legacy rails.
What the stock market needs next is not only faster settlement, but better collateral mobility, transparency, and programmability—without sacrificing investor protections.
2) Crypto’s strongest “GameStop-era” promise: reduce dependency on intermediaries
In crypto, settlement is often closer to “trade finality” because assets move on-chain and can be verified publicly. While there are still intermediaries (exchanges, stablecoin issuers, RPC providers), the key difference is architectural:
- Self-custody enables direct control of assets, rather than “beneficial ownership” mediated by a broker.
- Atomic settlement (e.g., swap A for B in one transaction) reduces the need for multi-day reconciliation.
- Programmable collateral can move and be rehypothecated under explicit rules (smart contracts), instead of opaque operational processes.
This is why the GameStop debate naturally overlaps with crypto themes like counterparty risk, market access, and censorship resistance—even if equities and blockchains cannot be merged overnight.
3) Tokenization in 2025–2026 is moving from “idea” to regulated infrastructure
For years, “tokenized stocks” sounded like a purely crypto-native experiment. But the institutional trajectory in 2025 and 2026 looks different: more pilots, more regulators engaged, and more “market plumbing” organizations building on-chain rails.
A standout signal came from market infrastructure itself:
- In December 2025, DTCC announced that its subsidiary DTC received an SEC No-Action Letter to offer a tokenization service for select DTC-custodied assets, with rollout anticipated in the second half of 2026 (DTCC press release; overview page: DTCC Digital Assets tokenization).
- Earlier, DTCC also highlighted tokenized collateral as a practical near-term win, launching a tokenized real-time collateral management initiative in April 2025 (DTCC announcement).
This matters for one reason: the most realistic near-term application of tokenization is not “meme stock trading on-chain,” but institutional-grade collateral, settlement, and cash management—the exact pressure points exposed in 2021.
4) Why stablecoins became the “settlement bridge” (and why regulation now matters)
If you want 24/7 on-chain markets, you need on-chain cash. In practice, that cash has been stablecoins.
In 2025, the U.S. took a major step toward clarifying the rules of the road: the GENIUS Act established a federal framework for payment stablecoins, including reserve standards and oversight requirements (Congressional Research Service overview; legal analysis example: Covington summary).
At the same time, policymakers are also trying to clarify broader crypto market structure. The Digital Asset Market Clarity (CLARITY) Act passed the House in 2025 and entered the Senate process later that year (Congress.gov bill page).
Why this connects to GameStop: if equities ever move toward tokenized settlement, stablecoins (or tokenized deposits) are a natural candidate for the cash leg—but only if regulators and market participants trust the reserves, redemption, and compliance model.
It’s also worth noting that global institutions remain cautious about stablecoins as “money” at the core of the system, even while supporting tokenization more broadly (see BIS: The next-generation monetary and financial system, June 24, 2025).
5) Real-world assets (RWA) are already scaling—starting with Treasuries, not equities
If you want a grounded view of tokenization demand, look at what has actually grown: tokenized U.S. Treasuries (and money-market-like products), used as on-chain yield and collateral.
As of January 27, 2026, tokenized U.S. Treasuries tracked by RWA analytics show ~$10.08B in total value (RWA.xyz Tokenized U.S. Treasuries dashboard).
This trend matters because Treasuries function as high-quality collateral across global finance. Putting them on-chain enables:
- faster collateral movement,
- more continuous liquidity management,
- programmable risk controls (haircuts, eligibility rules),
- composability with on-chain trading and lending venues.
In other words, RWAs are already addressing the “plumbing,” not just the “front-end trading experience.”
6) So what does the stock market need now? A practical checklist
Five years after January 28, 2021—and nearly two years after T+1—what the market needs is increasingly clear:
A) Real-time (or near real-time) collateral mobility
Not just faster trades, but faster risk absorption. Tokenized collateral platforms are targeting exactly this, especially for institutions (DTCC tokenized collateral initiative).
B) Transparent, auditable market infrastructure
Investors lost trust in 2021 partly because explanations arrived late and sounded opaque. Public blockchains offer verifiability, but regulated finance also needs privacy, permissions, and legal clarity—hence the rise of permissioned or hybrid approaches.
C) Programmable settlement primitives
Smart contracts can encode settlement logic, corporate actions, compliance constraints, and collateral rules. The BIS has repeatedly framed tokenization as transformative—if governance and risk management are sound (see BIS/CPMI: Tokenisation concepts and implications, Oct 21, 2024).
D) A credible regulatory perimeter for on-chain finance
Stablecoin rules (GENIUS) and market structure proposals (CLARITY) are not just “crypto industry wins.” They are prerequisites for integrating tokenized securities into mainstream finance.
7) The user-side reality: even “on-chain markets” can fail if custody fails
Whether you’re holding BTC, stablecoins, or tokenized real-world assets, one risk remains constant: if your private keys are compromised, your assets are gone.
As tokenization expands, more users will interact with:
- stablecoins for payments and settlement,
- tokenized Treasuries as collateral or yield instruments,
- tokenized stocks/ETFs as regulated offerings mature.
That brings self-custody back to the center of the conversation—not as ideology, but as operational security.
A hardware wallet is still the most straightforward way for individuals to reduce online attack surface by keeping private keys offline. If you’re building a long-term on-chain strategy (especially involving larger balances or multiple networks), OneKey can be a practical tool for self-custody: it’s designed to help users manage private keys offline while staying compatible with multi-chain usage and common Web3 workflows.
Closing thought
The GameStop event was never only about one stock. It was about who gets reliable access when markets are stressed, and how much of modern finance still depends on fragile, opaque, multi-step processes.
In 2026, the most credible path forward looks hybrid: improve traditional rails (T+1 and beyond), while steadily adopting blockchain-native primitives where they genuinely outperform—collateral mobility, programmable settlement, and always-on digital cash.
If the next five years are about bringing parts of capital markets on-chain, then the question isn’t whether crypto “replaces” stocks. It’s whether we can build a system where market access doesn’t disappear at the worst possible moment—and where users can actually control what they own.
