Hong Kong-listed company Chizi City leads the investment, HabitTrade raises nearly ten million USD to develop stock tokenization

HabitTrade completes nearly $10 million in Series A funding, led by Hong Kong-listed company Newborn Town Inc., with participation from Bright Venture Capital and StableStock. Founded in 2021, this stock tokenization platform is accelerating the development of compliant global broker infrastructure. The funding news also reflects that the stock tokenization track is evolving from early-stage trading innovation to a deeper infrastructure development phase.

Business Ambitions Behind the Funding

HabitTrade’s Core Positioning

HabitTrade is a brokerage platform integrating traditional assets and digital assets markets, with core services including:

• Stock trading and settlement services
• Offshore financial asset settlement based on stablecoins
• Tokenization issuance and settlement of real-world assets (RWA)
• Comprehensive brokerage solutions (trading, settlement, custody)

This positioning is crucial: it’s not just an exchange, but an attempt to serve as infrastructure connecting traditional finance and on-chain finance.

Three Directions for the Use of Funds

This round of funding will focus on:

• Expanding brokerage service capabilities to support more asset types
• Strengthening compliance infrastructure to meet regulatory requirements across regions
• Accelerating international expansion and establishing a global service network

These three directions reveal HabitTrade’s ambitions: not to deepen in a single market, but to build a global compliant infrastructure.

Signals of Industry Shift

From Trading Innovation to Infrastructure

According to recent news, HabitTrade’s recently launched Stove Protocol exemplifies this shift. The protocol adopts a strategy completely different from traditional projects:

• Open source, non-profit, zero protocol fees
• Permissionless protocol interface
• 1:1 mapping of US-listed stocks on-chain
• Focus not on optimizing a single trading scenario, but on building foundational modules that can be widely applied and called

This shift resembles the early evolution path of DeFi. Initially, DEXs evolved from simple trading pairs to AMMs, then to liquidity aggregation layers, and finally to foundational infrastructure for other applications. Stock tokenization now seems to be following a similar path: from “stocks tradable on-chain” to “core asset modules that can be repeatedly called and combined.”

Why This Is Important

From an investor’s perspective, the lead investment by Newborn Town Inc. also confirms this direction. As a Hong Kong-listed company, its participation indicates that traditional capital market participants are beginning to seriously recognize the value of stock tokenization infrastructure. This is not hype, but a preparation for the future of global capital markets.

Opportunities and Challenges Ahead

Based on current information, HabitTrade’s next steps should focus on:

• Improving global compliance systems and obtaining operational licenses in more regions
• Expanding the institutional client base, shifting from retail to institutional
• Deepening the ecosystem applications of Stove Protocol, enabling more applications to build on this protocol

However, challenges are also evident: stock tokenization involves complex cross-border regulation, with different rules in each region. The ability to quickly adapt to various regulatory environments will directly determine the success of international expansion.

Summary

This round of funding for HabitTrade is not just a project financing news; it reflects deep changes happening in the stock tokenization track. Moving from trading innovation to infrastructure building, from single products to protocol paradigms, these are signs of a mature market. The participation of Newborn Town Inc. also indicates that this track has gained recognition from traditional capital market participants. The key next step is whether HabitTrade can, under a global compliant framework, truly build a usable, trustworthy, and scalable stock tokenization infrastructure.