Binance is rapidly building multiple ways for crypto users to trade U.S. equities, with its latest product announcements showing that the exchange is no longer relying on a single route into stocks.
Instead, Binance now offers three substantially different wrappers around equity exposure alongside its direct-stock brokerage service: physically settled stock options, leveraged equity perpetual futures and blockchain-based bStocks that can trade on its spot market or move into self-custody.
The latest addition came on Sept. 1, when Binance announced options on more than 1,000 selected U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds for eligible users outside the United States.
The options are being offered through Nest Trading Limited, Binance’s broker-dealer regulated in Abu Dhabi Global Market. Nest acts as the introducing broker, while orders are routed to U.S.-registered Alpaca Securities, operating as Alpaca Clearing, for execution, clearing, settlement and custody.
Unlike Binance’s crypto-style equity derivatives, these are physically settled options. A customer exercising an eligible contract receives or delivers the underlying shares, which are held through Alpaca. Retail customers approved for the product can buy calls and puts, with their maximum loss on those long positions generally limited to the premium paid.
The product sits on top of Binance’s direct-stock operation, launched earlier this year with access to more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs. Customers buying those securities are beneficial owners of actual shares rather than holders of a crypto derivative. Binance says emerging-market customers generated more than 80% of direct-stock volume during the product’s first week.
But direct stocks are only the base layer of Binance’s equity strategy.
Just days before announcing stock options, Binance continued adding individual equities to its TradFi perpetual-futures business. On Aug. 28, the exchange added contracts linked to Tempus AI, Merck, IonQ, MARA Holdings and PDD Holdings. Earlier August batches covered names and ETFs ranging from Cloudflare and Shopify to Trump Media, leveraged semiconductor ETFs and South Korean equities.
These products behave much more like the perpetual futures familiar to crypto traders than conventional shares.
Equity-linked TradFi perpetuals do not give customers ownership of the underlying company. They are USDT-priced derivatives, generally trade around the clock and use funding mechanisms intended to keep the contract close to the underlying equity price. Binance has offered leverage on stock perpetuals, meaning traders can take positions larger than the capital committed and can also be liquidated when markets move against them.
That business has already become substantial.
Binance said TradFi perpetual-futures trading volume reached about $433.4 billion in August, compared with $29.5 billion in January. Equity-linked contracts accounted for roughly $342.9 billion, or 79%, of August TradFi perpetual volume. Binance said that represented growth of more than 800 times from the $410.9 million recorded for equity-linked perps in January.
A Third Route Puts Stocks Directly Into the Crypto Trading Stack
The third structure is bStocks.
Unlike equity perpetuals, bStocks are backed by actual shares. Unlike direct stocks, however, the customer does not directly own those shares.
Binance describes bStocks as tokenized securities issued by group affiliate BTech Holdings Limited. Each token is backed 1:1 by a corresponding U.S. share held with a regulated custodian and represents economic exposure to that security. Under the ADGM framework, bStocks are classified as certificates representing financial instruments rather than the underlying shares themselves.
The tokens are issued on BNB Smart Chain and can be traded 24/7 on Binance Spot. Eligible holders can also withdraw them to compatible wallets, opening the door to self-custody and potential use across DeFi applications.
Binance also allows eligible users to move between supported direct stocks and their bStock equivalents on a 1:1 basis. A user can buy the underlying equity and convert it into a bStock, convert an existing eligible share position, or simply purchase the bStock through Binance Spot.
The exchange has continued embedding the product deeper into its existing crypto infrastructure. On Aug. 28, Binance added bStocks to Spot Trading Bots and extended its zero-maker-fee campaign for the products. Binance’s Convert interface also supports bStock conversions, giving users another route that resembles exchanging one crypto balance for another rather than submitting a conventional securities order.
The product has grown quickly. Binance said in late July that bStocks had surpassed $500 million in assets under management just seven weeks after launching on June 11. The range had expanded from five securities at launch to more than 46 by then.
The three structures therefore give customers very different versions of exposure to essentially the same market.
An Nvidia investor, depending on availability and eligibility, could own the underlying shares through Binance’s brokerage interface, hold a tokenized claim backed by Nvidia shares, trade a perpetual futures contract tracking Nvidia’s price or use an Nvidia option to take a leveraged or hedged view with an expiry date.
All can appear inside the wider Binance account, but economically and legally they are not the same product.
Analysis: Binance Is Not Just Adding Stocks — It Is Rebuilding Them for Crypto Traders
Looking at Binance’s announcements individually makes the expansion appear incremental.
Five more perpetual contracts here. More bStock functionality there. Then another announcement adding stock options.
Taken together, the pattern is much more ambitious.
Binance appears to be importing the full equity-market stack into an environment originally designed for crypto and then offering users several different ways to express the same market view.
That is a very different strategy from simply becoming an online broker.
A traditional retail brokerage generally starts with shares, then adds options and perhaps futures or margin facilities for more sophisticated customers. Binance comes from the opposite direction. Its core users already understand spot tokens, perpetual futures, collateral, leverage and 24/7 markets.
The company can therefore translate equities into product formats those customers already know.
bStocks are the clearest example. Instead of asking a crypto-native trader to think about brokerage custody and T+1 settlement, Binance turns equity exposure into a BEP-20 token that can sit beside crypto assets in a spot wallet and potentially leave the exchange altogether.
TradFi perpetuals take the transformation further. The trader does not need the stock at all. A familiar USDT perpetual provides long or short exposure and leverage without share ownership.
Stock options then address another user need: defined-risk directional trades and hedging. Yet Binance has structured those through conventional regulated brokerage infrastructure, with physical settlement into actual securities rather than trying to recreate the entire options market as tokens.
That mix is important.
Binance is not forcing every traditional asset onto a blockchain. It is using whichever wrapper fits the particular trading behavior: regulated securities for direct ownership and options, tokenization where portability matters, and crypto-style derivatives where users want leverage and continuous trading.
There is also a strong commercial logic behind having overlapping products.
One customer holding a direct Tesla share can potentially become a bStocks user. A bStocks holder can become a perpetual-futures trader. Someone with a large equity position can potentially buy a put option to hedge it. Binance can keep the customer, collateral and trading activity within the same ecosystem instead of sending that user to a stock broker whenever their interests move beyond crypto.
The August volume figures suggest derivatives may be the most important part economically. More than $342 billion of equity-linked perpetual volume in one month is far larger than the early activity Binance has disclosed for direct equities or bStocks.
But the three products serve different purposes, which is precisely the point.
The deeper strategy is not to find one perfect replacement for conventional stock trading. It is to make equities behave differently depending on what a Binance customer wants to do with them.
For the brokerage industry, that may be the more consequential development. Binance is no longer competing with stock brokers only by putting shares inside a crypto app. It is taking the same underlying equities and repackaging them into spot tokens, perpetual derivatives and physically settled options.
The stock stays the same. The wrapper changes.
And Binance is increasingly giving crypto traders a reason to choose whichever wrapper keeps them inside Binance.