When U.S. Stocks Devour Crypto, Here's Your Beginner & Advanced Guide to U.S. Stocks

If the biggest anxiety for on-chain users in past cycles was "missing the next big surge," then in 2026, this anxiety is quietly taking on a new form:

What more and more people are starting to worry about is no longer missing out on a new token, but finding themselves stuck in an old market that smart money is abandoning.

This is a subtle but crucial shift.

On one side, the Crypto altcoin myth has completely shattered, with liquidity diluted to exhaustion across various narrative bubbles; on the other side, the US stock market is siphoning everything away at an unprecedented pace: retail investors are flowing in, media coverage is intensifying, CEXs are fully embracing TradFi, and familiar KOLs and traders are also discussing indices, individual stocks, macroeconomics, and earnings reports more frequently.

This article also aims to answer the most fundamental questions: Why now of all times? And, how should new users take their first step into the US stock market (https://msx.com/news/m_point_classify_1765801273_824b02d1-4496-40e1-824a-5c79609bc634)?

1. 2026: Retail Investors Accelerate Their Exodus from Crypto, Flocking to US Stocks

In 2026, we may be witnessing the most paradoxical divergence in Crypto history.

Not long ago, market maker Wintermute, in collaboration with JPMorgan, released the latest research on retail fund flows. This marks the first systematic side-by-side presentation of retail behavior data for Crypto and US stocks, and the results were unsurprising.

From early 2025 to mid-2025, the two curves were largely synchronized, reflecting a rise in risk appetite where retail investors bought into both markets simultaneously—a common pattern in recent years. Even the brief divergence around April, lasting about two months, closely coincided with the macro event of Trump announcing "Liberation Day" tariff reciprocity on April 2nd.

Of course, to some extent, this indicates that against the backdrop of synchronized "black swan" drawdowns, US stocks indeed demonstrate greater resilience and recovery power compared to altcoins.

However, starting from late 2025, this synchronized risk appetite linkage completely decoupled, arguably the most extreme divergence recently. The divergence Z-score in the chart below fell to around -4, hitting a new low for the year, signifying that capital is voting with its feet, and the destination is US stocks.

Extending the timeline back to 2022 reveals an even more pronounced shift (the pink line represents total altcoin market cap, the black line represents retail inflow into US stocks). That is, from 2022 to the end of 2024, the two moved in lockstep; retail investors treated them as the same type of asset: high-risk, high-volatility, rising and falling together.

But the decoupling at the end of 2024 stands out starkly in the entire chart. Since then, the behavior pattern of crypto retail investors has become more short-term, emotional, and lacking in structure; meanwhile, the capital flowing into US stocks not only hasn't retreated but has continued to hit new highs.

Two markets, the same group of retail investors, making completely different choices.

The final chart provides statistical confirmation of the above phenomenon. The rolling correlation coefficient shows that retail capital behavior between Crypto and US stocks long maintained a positive correlation (green area, correlation coefficient >0.4). However, after the dividing line at the end of 2024, this relationship turned negative—retail investors are no longer buying into both sides simultaneously but are making an "either-or" allocation.

Each red area signifies that a portion of capital that might have flowed into crypto has been diverted to US stocks. This is a structural capital migration, and the trend is still ongoing.

In fact, this migration is not only happening at the capital level but also simultaneously at the media and attention levels.

If you open a leading Chinese-language Web3 media outlet now, you'll find that an increasing number of front-page sections are being occupied by US individual stocks, macro variables, and traditional market events. On the surface, this is an adjustment in editorial topics, but at a deeper level, it is precisely the result of user attention migration.

Media always amplifies demand that has already begun to form; it doesn't gratuitously pave the way for a market that holds no interest.

In other words, the fact that even "Web3 media" is reporting on US stocks more frequently itself indicates one thing: The Crypto sentiment cycle has reached a stage where users are compelled to actively seek new outlets.

2. Why Now of All Times?

This question deserves a serious answer.

The notion that "US stocks are worth paying attention to" is not new. What is truly fresh is the timing of 2026—institutional barriers are loosening, and the relative value of assets is being reassessed. These two things are happening in rare synchrony.

First, the wall between Wall Street and the on-chain world is being actively dismantled.

For many years, the US stock market wasn't unattractive to most ordinary users; it was just too cumbersome. After all, opening an account, currency exchange, funding, selling and waiting for settlement, withdrawing... each step wasn't impossible, but it was sufficiently tedious to keep most users psychologically viewing it as "another system."

Starting this month, this situation is accelerating its change.

On March 18, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) formally approved Nasdaq to launch a pilot for securities tokenization trading. This means the wallet, on-chain operation logic, and stablecoin settlement paths you are familiar with will no longer serve only Crypto-native assets but will also begin to provide access to global core equity assets like Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla.

In the past, the US stock market was a system you had to actively cross over and adapt to. Now, for the first time, it is moving closer to you in a way more aligned with Web3 user habits. The day when buying a share of Nvidia might become as simple as buying a meme coin may not be far off.

Ultimately, tokenization liberates US stocks from the three major hurdles of "account opening, funding, and withdrawal," transforming them back into an asset class that can be accessed with low barriers by a broader user base—for those familiar with on-chain operations, it might just be a new experience, but for users who have been kept outside the door until now, this is liberation in the truest sense.

The second factor is that against the backdrop of global liquidity tightening, capital is repricing the value proposition of Crypto versus US stocks.

The US stock market is essentially a dual-cycle market of "liquidity-profitability." During liquidity expansion, valuations expand; during liquidity contraction, valuations compress. However, unlike Crypto assets, which rely more on sentiment and narratives, its core support lies in corporate earnings themselves. That is to say, it certainly can fall, and may even experience deep drawdowns due to macro pressures, but as long as corporate profits, cash flow, and industry logic remain, the market will eventually find an anchor for recovery.

Because of this, the US stock market always exhibits a very typical characteristic: its declines may not be light, but they are logical; when it rises, it often recovers faster.

Crypto is different. It acts more like a high-leverage amplifier of risk appetite. During liquidity abundance, its gains far outpace most traditional assets. During liquidity contraction and declining risk appetite, its drawdowns are typically deeper, faster, and more bottomless. Especially as institutionalization deepens with the advent of ETFs, Bitcoin is increasingly becoming a core asset recognized by mainstream capital, while many altcoins are gradually losing their ability to sustain liquidity after the tide recedes.

In other words, the wild era of chasing excess returns through "sector rotation + altcoin rallies" is accelerating its end. This "institutionalization" hasn't made it easier for ordinary retail investors to make money. Instead, it has concentrated Alpha, causing marginal returns to converge increasingly towards top-tier assets.

This, in turn, elevates the attractiveness of US stocks.

Compared to most altcoins, US stocks offer greater certainty. They don't guarantee you'll make money, but most of the time, you can articulate what you're buying, why it fell, and the logic behind its rise. For Crypto users who have weathered multiple rounds of high on-chain volatility, this "explicability" is undoubtedly the most scarce value at present.

3. What's the Real Challenge for New Users Learning About US Stocks?

By this point, your first reaction might be: "I've actually wanted to get into US stocks for a long time, I just haven't started."

This "haven't started" often stems not from a lack of willingness. After all, for most users, the traditional path into the US stock market has been unfriendly from the outset: requirements like overseas or Hong Kong/Macau identity proof, address proof, cross-border funding, T+1/T+2 settlement, holiday rollovers, etc. Individually, none of these steps is fatal. What truly discourages people is the friction cost formed when they are stacked together.

So, many people aren't unwilling to learn about US stocks; it's that whenever they prepare to start, this process pushes them back into a vague idea. This is also why the emergence of on-chain US stocks isn't just "one more option" for everyone; it's the first time the path has been genuinely cleared:

Zero-barrier account opening, direct stablecoin deposits/withdrawals, on-chain self-custody, 7×24 hour settlement... Individually, these features might not seem revolutionary. But when combined, they precisely address every sticking point that has prevented the vast majority of users from entering the US stock market.

It's not simply moving the old world onto the chain; it's using the on-chain approach to make "wanting to learn about US stocks" something that can truly be started immediately for the first time.

Once the "how to get in" problem is solved, another roadblock emerges: where to start learning the knowledge system of US stocks?

Actually, Crypto users have an advantage most don't realize: the years you've spent navigating the on-chain world have subconsciously completed the hardest part of investment education. For example, how to make judgments with incomplete information, how to manage position psychology with high-volatility assets, how to identify the gap between narrative hype and fundamentals.

These skills are equally valid in US stocks, just expressed in a different vocabulary:

FDV divided by protocol annual revenue asks the same question as the P/E ratio; a stock falling after an announcement is released follows the same game theory as "Buy the rumor, sell the news"; the Fed's liquidity injection driving up BTC and interest rate cuts pushing the Nasdaq higher are flows from the same pool of money.

What people lack isn't investment thinking; it's a translation dictionary written in the language they're familiar with.

Based on this understanding, MSX has specifically launched the "US Stock Market Learning Hub" (link: https://msx.com/news/m_point_classify_1765801273_824b02d1-4496-40e1-824a-5c79609bc634) activity for everyone—not a generic US stock introductory course, but a systematic pathway starting from foundational US market understanding, deconstructing core US stock concepts, covering a complete framework from the underlying mechanisms of US stocks, the three major indices, earnings season logic, to valuation methods.

The goal is singular: to help you build a basic judgment framework for US stocks from zero in the shortest time, and then truly start taking action, rather than letting "learning about US stocks" continue gathering dust in your bookmarks.

After all, the wall separating ordinary users from US stocks is being pushed down. US stocks will enter the lives of more people faster and more thoroughly than anyone expects.

Those who learn how to cross over first are often the ones who gain the firmest footing next. So, before it completely falls, catch up on the lessons you need to learn.

It's not too late to start this now.