Uphold this week rolled out trading for over 4,000 stocks and ETFs, including names like Apple and SpaceX. Users can fund those trades directly with cryptocurrency holdings — no need to move money to another app. The move blurs the line between crypto and traditional investing, letting holders of bitcoin, ether, or other coins put them to work in equities without cashing out first.
Crypto as collateral for stock trades
Instead of selling crypto to a fiat wallet and then buying stocks, Uphold users can now use their crypto balances to purchase shares directly. The exchange handles the conversion behind the scenes. That means a trader holding, say, USDC or BTC can buy Apple stock in the same interface, with the crypto acting as the funding source. Uphold says the process is instant and doesn't require a separate transfer to a brokerage account.
Fractional shares for high-priced names
Uphold is also introducing fractional stock trading. That opens up expensive stocks — like SpaceX, which isn't publicly listed but appears in Uphold's offering — to investors with small amounts. Instead of needing thousands of dollars for a single share, users can buy a sliver. The feature applies to all 4,000+ instruments, making it easier to build a diversified portfolio with limited capital.
Beyond regular hours
Uphold plans to extend trading access beyond standard market hours. The company hasn't given a launch date, but the feature is in the works. Extended-hours trading is common among traditional brokerages but less so among crypto-first platforms. If Uphold delivers, it could give users more flexibility to react to news or price moves that happen after the closing bell.
The stock-trading expansion is a big step for a platform best known for crypto. By letting users fund equity trades with digital assets, Uphold is betting that its customer base wants to move between asset classes without friction. The extended-hours feature, when it arrives, will be the next test of that bet.
