Three major crypto exchanges—Bybit, Binance, and Bitget—scrapped their tokenized SpaceX allocation campaigns on Friday after xStocks, the tokenization platform, could not source the underlying shares needed to back the products. The cancellations came just hours after the campaigns had gone live, catching retail investors off guard.
The failure centers on xStocks' inability to procure actual SpaceX equity in a secondary market that remains opaque and illiquid for pre-IPO stakes. Without deliverable shares, the tokenized offerings—marketed as a way for cryptocurrency users to gain SpaceX exposure—could not be fulfilled, forcing the exchanges to pull the allocations entirely.
Rival onchain protocols stepped in on the same morning, with Ondo Finance, xStocks' own DeFi arm, and Backpack launching successful tokenized offerings. This divergence highlights a growing split between centralized exchange-based tokenization and decentralized alternatives that may offer more flexible sourcing mechanisms.
A counterargument holds that the canceled products were not a market failure but rather a procedural misstep by xStocks, which may still secure shares later. Critics of the rival DeFi approaches warn that without verified delivery of underlying assets, onchain tokens carry similar risks of being unbacked promises rather than true security equivalents.