In about an hour from now, windfall Billionaire cryptocurrency investor, Michael Saylor, would have the stock token equivalent of his bitcoin-laden company – MicroStrategy (MSTR) – listed and open for acquisition on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform. Starting 1:30 PM (UTC) MicroStrategy will take the lead listing a digital version of their stocks on Binance, with the two largest US market leaders – Apple (AAPL) and Bill Gates, Microsoft (MSFT)– looking to follow through at the same time on Wednesday and Friday, respectively. 

The new listings would see an entry of the top two biggest companies in the US with a combined market capitalization of over $4 trillion, into the cryptospace, signaling the possibility for other companies to follow suit in the coming months. The share price of Apple AAPL currently stands at $134.32, with Microsoft MSFT almost doubling at $261.15, while the dot com veteran, MicroStrategy MSTR leads the trio at $613.04.

What Actually Are These Tokens?

A stock token or just ‘token’ is just one of the digital methods companies have adopted to democratically raise capital through the issuance of a digitally backed equity called digital tokens or coins.

These coins make their way to the market through a public channel for offering known as Initial Coin Offering (ICO), similar to Initial Public Offers. Their activities mirror the process of traditional market listings but have the advantage of lesser regulations, middlemen interference, and government influence on trading activities.

Thanks to the growth in the scope and usage of blockchain, they have become the digital variant of some company’s original equity shares such as Tesla, and Coinbase, already made available on the market, which is expected to be valued and influenced by the volatility and fluctuations of the stock market. This is because, just like tradable stocks, they do not exist independent of the activities of the company and as such, are designed to be fully backed by a corresponding amount of underlying value of securities authorized by the company.

Following the public listing of its biggest rival, Coinbase, Binance hopes to continue its trading volume dominance on the exchange sector of the cryptocurrency industry with these three additional listings and could see a surge in traffic before the end of April, given its lower transactions fees and highly valuable in-house transaction currency. The US standard trading time is the official trading time for all stocks on Binance.