Binance is evolving into a new species
Written by: ChandlerZ, Foresight News
The New York Stock Exchange closes at 4 PM daily, which is 5 AM the next day for a trader in Tokyo. When NVIDIA releases its after-hours earnings report, he wakes up to the news but the market is already closed—he has to wait several more hours to act. If a geopolitical conflict breaks out over the weekend and global asset prices fluctuate sharply, his US stock holdings can only be adjusted when the market opens on Monday. This time mismatch is a common friction faced by hundreds of millions of non-US investors worldwide; no matter how good a brokerage's app is, it can't change New York's clock.
Capital fragmentation is another more hidden friction. For the same user, US stocks are held at a brokerage, crypto assets at an exchange, and gold possibly on a third platform. Want to convert NVIDIA profits into Bitcoin? Sell the stock, wait for T+1 settlement, withdraw to a bank, transfer to a crypto exchange, then buy BTC—this entire process can take two to three business days. Assets are separated by walls of accounts, platforms, and settlement cycles.
Now, the same user opens the Binance App, buys NVDA perpetual contracts with USDT, which can be traded 24/7—they can react immediately to breaking news at 3 AM. Want to switch from US stock exposure to BTC spot? It can be done almost instantly with the same account and same funds.
In January 2026, Binance announced the launch of TradFi perpetual contracts, offering perpetual futures contracts for traditional assets and supporting round-the-clock trading of traditional markets. By the third week of May, the trading volume of traditional financial asset perpetual contracts on Binance reached $60.3 billion, accounting for 10.3% of the platform's total perpetual contract trading volume! Among 627 trading pairs, 51 traditional financial pairs contributed one-tenth of the volume. Brent crude oil perpetual contract trading volume has reached 10.4% of the global equivalent futures market, and silver peaked at 11.5%.
SpaceX Pre-IPO perpetual contracts accumulated $400 million in trading volume within a week of launch, and Binance immediately captured 65% of the Pre-IPO perpetual contract market share.
What does it mean when crypto exchanges start offering US stock products? Is it just feature addition, or the birth of a new species?
Spillover of US Stock Demand
Global investors' hunger for US stocks far exceeds most people's intuition.
In May 2026, the total market capitalization of US stocks exceeded $75 trillion for the first time, an increase of $3 trillion from the beginning of the year. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both hit all-time highs on May 27. The S&P 500 rose for 9 consecutive weeks, and the Nasdaq gained 8% in May alone. US stocks account for nearly 50% of the global stock market capitalization, firmly ranking first in the world. The long-term performance of US stocks not only significantly outperforms Europe and Japan but also far surpasses most emerging markets.
Benefiting from the continuous profit growth of large tech giants led by the Mag 7, NVIDIA's Q1 revenue for fiscal year 2027 reached $81.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 85%. The AI capital expenditure cycle has fully started; the combined capital expenditure budget of the seven tech giants in 2026 reached $680 billion to $725 billion, a further step up from $400 billion in 2025.
Looking at specific sectors, US stocks saw a full-scale rally in May. According to Dow Jones Market Data, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), known as the barometer of the global semiconductor industry, has soared 79.3% year-to-date. The memory chip sector is even more frenzied: SanDisk's annual gain exceeds 4000%, and memory chip giant Micron Technology went from $500 billion to $1 trillion in market capitalization in 48 days. The US space-themed sector attracted more than $1.3 billion in new capital in the past month, with sector AUM surging to $3.3 billion.
The profit growth of US tech giants, the start of the AI capital expenditure cycle, and the safe-haven attribute of dollar assets are continuously drawing global capital to New York.
Capital flow data directly confirms this attraction: in 2025, US equity ETFs saw net inflows of over $650 billion, and the total inflow into the US ETF market reached a record $1.49 trillion. This is just the appeal of listed assets—only SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic have a combined market value of over $3.5 trillion that will soon enter the public market. The progress of each super IPO amplifies global investors' enthusiasm to participate in US stocks.
But for many non-US investors, US stocks are a market that is visible but out of reach. Of the nearly 6 billion adult population worldwide, fewer than 1 billion have securities accounts, and the number of users who can conveniently trade US stocks is even smaller. Account opening qualifications, capital channels, and trading experience are all barriers.
Since the second half of 2025, this supply-demand mismatch has further intensified. Cross-border brokerage channels in some Asia-Pacific regions have tightened, forcing existing users to look for alternatives. The affected users cover a wide range, from Southeast Asia to East Asia, from retail investors to medium-sized active traders. These traders already have US stock trading experience, have product awareness, and demand high execution quality; many of their holdings involve US tech stocks and ETFs. They don't need a "usable" alternative—they need a "good" one.
Actually, the core demands of this group of users can be broken down into three points: capital security, trading liquidity, and product richness. These three demands naturally point to an existing platform with a large user base and deep liquidity, and an entry point that doesn't require building trust from scratch.
Binance's US Stock Product Matrix
Looking at Binance's currently launched US stock-related products, we can see a clearly layered structure.
The first layer is perpetual contracts. This is the most widely covered and actively traded entry point: 39 US single-stock perpetual contracts, plus four ETFs (SPY, QQQ, IBIT, GLD), plus Pre-IPO index contracts and SpaceX contracts. Synthetic derivatives do not hold underlying stocks and provide pure directional exposure. Settled in USDT, with up to 20x leverage, and tradable 24/7.
The significance of perpetual contracts lies in lowering the threshold for US stock trading to the minimum. Users don't need US dollars, don't need a brokerage account, don't need to wait for New York's opening—they can participate in the rise and fall of NVIDIA, Tesla, and Apple with their USDT. For users who only want to get directional exposure to US stocks, this is the lowest-cost and shortest-path option.
The explosion of Pre-IPO contracts is also notable: Binance launched SpaceX Pre-IPO perpetual contracts on May 21. Before the launch, the average daily trading volume on other platforms was only $20 million; Binance captured 65% of the market share within a few days of entering, with cumulative trading volume reaching $400 million by May 27—four of the seven days saw daily trading volume exceed $100 million. After the launch of OpenAI Pre-IPO perpetual contracts, 85% of the total market trading volume occurred on Binance, with $53 million traded in the first two days.
The second layer is tokenized securities. Through Binance Alpha and Binance Wallet, Binance has access to tokenized US stocks and ETFs provided by Ondo Global Markets. Unlike perpetual contracts, on-chain tokens for tokenized securities correspond to real underlying stocks—they can be self-custodied and used in combination with DeFi protocols. This follows a channel model of third-party issuance plus Binance distribution.
Tokenized securities meet another type of demand: users want to truly "hold" US stock assets on-chain, put them in their wallets, and use them for collateral, portfolio building, and cross-protocol asset allocation. These users are more mature and have clear preferences for asset programmability and self-custody. Take a real example: after Ondo's tokenized US stocks were connected to Chainlink price feeds, they can already be used as collateral in DeFi lending protocols like Euler Finance. Users hold tokenized S&P ETF exposure while using it to borrow USDT for other operations. In the traditional brokerage system, the stock pledge financing process takes days, but on-chain, this operation can be completed in minutes.
The third layer is real stock trading. On June 1, Binance launched zero-commission trading for over 7000 US stocks and ETFs for non-US users, with trading hours 24 hours a day, five days a week. For payments, USDC is mainly used for stock purchases, and BNB, USDT, U, and USD1 are also supported—orders are automatically converted to USDC for transactions, and proceeds from stock sales are returned to the user's fund account in USDC. Regarding fees: in addition to zero commissions, Binance has launched a limited-time discount on stock and ETF trading fees—from 20:00 on June 3 to 7:59 on July 1, 2026, the spread for orders with transaction amounts exceeding $350 will be reduced from 0.10% to 0.05%.
Crypto exchanges have for the first time provided a stock-holding experience completely equivalent to traditional brokerages, while retaining the convenience of crypto platforms. Users don't need to open a separate brokerage account or hold US dollars—they can buy real Apple, NVIDIA, and Tesla stocks with crypto assets. The coverage depth of over 7000 targets also exceeds most cross-border brokerages for non-US users.
On this basis, Binance will soon launch tokenized stocks (bStocks), allowing users to convert their held real stocks into on-chain tokens on BNB Chain, gaining the programmability and composability of on-chain assets while retaining equity. The announcement clearly defines bStocks as "certificates representing specific financial instruments" and notes that bStocks holders do not directly own the equity of the underlying listed company.
These layers of products form a complete demand spectrum: users who want to bet on direction use perpetual contracts (lowest threshold, flexible leverage); users who want to hold on-chain and do DeFi combinations use Ondo tokenized securities; those who want real stock trading now have a new option. From speculation to holding, from synthetic exposure to real equity, users at different levels can find an entry point suitable for themselves.
Even the expansion of the product matrix continues: from Binance's current roadmap and industry trends, the combination possibilities between derivative tools, more target coverage, and deeper stock channels will become more diverse in the coming period. This multi-level product architecture is difficult for traditional brokerages to replicate within a single service system.
Why Binance?
Many crypto exchanges are布局 US stock products: Bitget laid out non-crypto asset trading early, Bybit and Coinbase are negotiating joint distribution of tokenized US stocks, and Backpack co-issued SEC-registered on-chain equity with Superstate. The question is, with a crowded track, why is Binance's position different?
By the end of 2025, Binance's global registered users exceeded 300 million, covering more than 180 countries and regions—one out of every 27 people worldwide is a Binance user. This user base directly determines liquidity depth. Binance has long been the global leader in CEX trading volume, with smaller bid-ask spreads, lower slippage, and lower impact costs for large transactions. For users transitioning from traditional finance, transaction costs and execution quality are the most sensitive indicators; the depth they are used to on Nasdaq will immediately feel the gap on crypto platforms with insufficient liquidity.
This stock advantage is directly reflected in the US stock product line: according to CoinDesk data, in the past two months, the average daily size of the TradFi perpetual contract market was about $7 billion, with Binance accounting for 45% to 60% of the share, and over 60% in the commodity sector. In the Pre-IPO perpetual contract track, Binance captured 65% of the market share within a few days of launch. New categories don't need to acquire users from scratch—an相当比例 of the 300 million users have a natural demand for US stock exposure, and funds are already沉淀 in the platform in the form of USDT. As soon as the product is launched, there are ready buyers and sellers. Traditional brokerages entering the crypto field have to build a user pool from scratch in each new market, while Binance only needs to add an entry in the App of existing users.
SpaceX perpetual contracts achieved $280 million in trading volume in the first five days of launch, SNDK had $500 million in daily trading volume, and MU reached $391 million. New categories don't need to acquire users from scratch—an相当比例 of the 300 million users have a natural demand for US stock exposure, and funds are already沉淀 in the platform in the form of USDT. As soon as the product is launched, there are ready buyers and sellers. Traditional brokerages entering the crypto field have to build a user pool from scratch in each new market, while Binance only needs to add an entry in the App of existing users.
At the technical architecture level, the matching engine, clearing and settlement system, wallet infrastructure, and risk control model of crypto exchanges can be directly reused for traditional asset trading. The underlying logic of processing BTC/USDT and NVDA/USDT is the same, so the marginal cost of expanding new categories is very low. In contrast, Wall Street enters the Pre-IPO and tokenization tracks through mergers and acquisitions: Charles Schwab spent $660 million to acquire Forge Global to get a private equity trading platform, and Morgan Stanley spent $350 million to $450 million to acquire EquityZen. Crypto platforms expand categories with the same set of engines, while traditional finance uses billion-dollar acquisitions to fill capability gaps—the path cost difference is obvious.
At the same time, Binance's compliance investment in recent years is the largest in the crypto industry: operating licenses in multiple jurisdictions, continuous dialogue with regulatory agencies, and transparent disclosure of the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). In December 2025, Binance announced that it had obtained full regulatory authorization from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA) of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), becoming the first crypto exchange to obtain a global license under the ADGM framework. In January 2026, Binance submitted a MiCA license application to Greece to promote EU compliance expansion. SB Seker, Binance's Asia-Pacific head, said in March that Binance plans to obtain five new licenses in Asia within 2026, pushing the number of globally licensed jurisdictions to more than 20. According to publicly disclosed reserve proof data, Binance holds about $150 billion in user assets, about 8.2 times that of the second-ranked trading platform.
In 2025, the platform's institutional trading volume increased by 21% year-on-year, and OTC fiat trading volume surged by 210%. The flow choice of institutional funds itself is an indicator of security; when the most prudent fund allocators choose to put their money on a platform, this is a more effective trust endorsement for new users than any advertisement.
User base, liquidity depth, infrastructure reuse capability, and compliance investment—these elements support each other and form positive feedback. Every new product line launched strengthens this cycle. The characteristic of a flywheel is that the faster it spins, the harder it is for latecomers to catch up. In today's highly mature crypto industry competition pattern, the moat effect of this first-mover advantage will become more and more significant.
Super Entry to the New Financial World
Crypto exchanges doing US stocks seem to be a horizontal extension of the product line on the surface. From another angle, this is the formation of a new type of financial entry.
The service architecture of traditional finance is divided by asset class: stocks go to brokerages, futures to futures companies, crypto assets to crypto exchanges, and foreign exchange to forex brokers. When users want to switch between different asset classes, they need to jump between different platforms—different accounts, different fund pools, different KYC processes, different trading interfaces. Every