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$691.36 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.

See also: Binance Faces CFTC Probe Over US Customers Trading Derivatives: Report