Actually, before Chinese investors used USDT to buy US stocks, this path had already been traveled for 30 years.
In these 30 years, the way Chinese investors accessed US stocks has gone through three generations.
I've been thinking these past few nights that viewing these three historical phases separately is also a pretty interesting observation.
Phase One (1997-2014): Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and US brokerages.
Phase Two (2014-2024): Chinese brokers and Hong Kong bank cards.
Phase Three (starting in 2025): Stablecoins and crypto exchanges will inevitably create many opportunity windows.
Phase One (1997-2014): QDII and the Schwab era, where trading US stocks was a game for the wealthy.
Initially, ordinary folks had two routes to buy US stocks:
-QDII funds. Simply put, these are fund products issued by domestic companies that can invest in overseas markets.
Due to control over RMB capital projects, QDII funds are a regulated mechanism allowing domestic institutions to invest in overseas capital markets.
What you're buying are fund shares, not individual US stocks, with management fees ranging from 1.5-2% annually; a 40% drop over three years is all that generation remembers about US stocks.
-Charles Schwab (wire transfers in USD overseas, requires an overseas address).
Back in the day, those who could leverage these routes were basically high-net-worth individuals, foreign execs, and parents of students studying abroad. Average middle-class folks didn't even dream about it.
At this stage, catching US stocks is quite a challenge.
At that time, US stocks were a privilege for the wealthy; ordinary people could only hold them indirectly.
Phase two (2014-2024): A decade of online brokerage where mainland middle-class folks could first use their phones to buy US stocks.
The turning point was 2014.
Futu secured Hong Kong's first license, while Tiger was established in Beijing.
Both companies are targeting the same window, with mobile internet penetration breaking 50% + the opening of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect + US stocks entering the bull market for Tesla/Nvidia.
What they did was cut the US stock account opening process from 3 days to 3 minutes, and made deposits from international wire transfers to just swiping a bank card.
Futu went public on Nasdaq in 2019, peaking at a market cap of $40 billion. Tiger went public in 2020. By 2021, Futu had over a million clients holding positions.
This decade is a golden window period for those born in the 80s and 90s. You could snag Apple at tens of times its value, and Nvidia at hundreds.
This is the first time US stocks are accessible on Chinese middle-class phones; you need to go through brokers, Hong Kong, bank cards, and forex channels.
Phase three (from 2025): The stablecoin era, where the entry into US stocks is moved onto the chain.
Standing at this phase, we need to answer a core question,
Why do I think 2026 will see the third wave of crypto exchanges?
On one hand, the circulation of stablecoins has already surpassed $300 billion, and Asian users settling in USDT is commonplace; on the other hand, the RWA framework is in place, with underlying stock custody processes being verifiable and redeemable.
Exchanges like Binance, Bitget, and Gate are currently the most vital platforms providing financial services to global users through unified infrastructure.
Moreover, at this current time, US stocks, especially in the AI sector, have a siphoning effect on capital from around the world.
So I think many new window of opportunity will emerge right now.
After all, buying US stocks through crypto routes still has us standing at the early stages of history.