Binance is expanding its institutional infrastructure and user-growth strategy during a crypto market downturn, aiming to increase its verified active user base from about 310 million to 3 billion by 2030.

Catherine Chen, Binance’s head of VIP and Institutional, said the exchange is continuing to build while parts of the crypto sector face tighter conditions, layoffs and shifting business models.

“It is true, the market is going through a hard time,” Chen said. “There is still some regulatory development, we are seeing some of our competitors either struggling or perhaps shifting their focus.”

The push comes as the broader crypto market remains under pressure. Bitcoin has struggled to reclaim the $100,000 level after falling from highs reached before the October Flash Crash. Total crypto market capitalization is hovering near $2.7 trillion, down nearly 40% from its previous all-time high of $4.38 trillion.

Binance remains the largest crypto exchange by several key measures, with more than 310 million active users. Chen said these are verified active individual users, not simply registered accounts, and are subject to KYC and KYB checks.

The exchange is now targeting a roughly 10-fold increase in users by 2030. That would place Binance at the center of a much broader digital asset adoption cycle, assuming crypto infrastructure expands beyond retail trading and into banking, asset management and institutional settlement.

A major part of that strategy is Binance’s push into institutional infrastructure.

Chen pointed to a large spending gap between traditional financial markets and crypto markets. Traditional finance spends more than $2 billion annually on advanced order management systems, while crypto infrastructure spending is estimated at about $185 million.

Binance is trying to bridge that gap with a new OMS toolkit designed for institutional clients. The toolkit is being developed with partners including Coin Metrics, Talos and 3Commas, and is intended to provide stronger flow analytics and institutional-grade trading infrastructure.

“Financial institutions are increasingly merging with crypto exchanges and blockchain infrastructure providers,” Chen said. “They don’t want to be building all that infrastructure themselves.”

The exchange is also deepening its links with traditional financial assets through a triparty banking framework aimed at reducing counterparty risk for institutional clients.

Chen said institutions often do not want to custody crypto directly or leave large amounts of capital on an exchange. Instead, they prefer to keep fiat or fiat-equivalent assets with existing banking partners while using those assets to support trading activity.

Binance’s framework allows eligible institutional clients to pledge tokenized money market funds from firms including BlackRock and Franklin Templeton within triparty ecosystems.

That means institutions can use real-time, yield-bearing tokenized fund shares to support trading activity, rather than relying only on manual Treasury futures rolls or more operationally heavy collateral structures.

“Whether it is equities, treasury, or debt, this is the way forward,” Chen said, pointing to a 12-to-18-month period in which real-world asset tokenization could mature further.

She added that tokenization does not change the fundamental price or characteristics of an asset. Instead, it improves accessibility and operational efficiency.

Binance has also rolled out Crypto-as-a-Service, a platform designed for banks, asset managers and other financial institutions seeking exposure to digital assets without building the full infrastructure stack internally.

Chen said more than 15 major financial institutions have sought Binance’s services since the platform was launched.

The strategy reflects a broader shift across the crypto sector. Exchanges are no longer competing only for retail trading volume. They are competing to become infrastructure providers for institutions that want crypto exposure, tokenized collateral, market access and operational support.

For Binance, the downturn appears to be part of the setup rather than a reason to slow investment.

“Whenever the market is bad, it is always the best time for us to build,” Chen said. “We are building and positioning ourselves to 10x our user base when people aren’t noticing—and then, hopefully, we are already there.”

Binance Is Not Waiting for Retail to Come Back — It Is Building for the Banks

The 3 billion user target sounds insane at first.

Then you look at what Binance is actually doing.

This is not just a retail comeback bet. It is not “wait for Bitcoin to pump and hope new users ape in.” That would be lazy. Binance is aiming at something bigger and much more boring: becoming the infrastructure layer that banks, asset managers and institutional desks use when they finally stop treating crypto like a side experiment.

That is the real story.

The market is ugly. Bitcoin is stuck below the six-figure psychological level. Total crypto market cap has been chopped down from its highs. Competitors are cutting staff, narrowing focus or trying to survive the cycle.

Binance is doing the opposite.

It is building plumbing.

That matters.

Retail speculation can bring volume. It cannot build a durable financial system by itself. The next serious crypto cycle probably will not be driven only by people buying meme coins from their phones at 2 a.m. It will need collateral rails, institutional execution, custody workarounds, compliant access and better trading infrastructure.

Binance knows this.

The $2 billion OMS spending gap is one of the cleanest signals in the whole story. Traditional finance spends more than $2 billion a year on advanced order management systems. Crypto spends around $185 million.

That is not a gap.

That is a canyon.

And it explains why many institutions still treat crypto execution like a downgrade. They are used to mature systems, strong analytics, deep routing, cleaner controls and infrastructure that does not feel duct-taped together during a bull market.

Crypto has liquidity. It has speed. It has 24/7 markets.

But institutional tooling? Still patchy.

That is where Binance is trying to wedge itself in.

The OMS toolkit with Coin Metrics, Talos and 3Commas is not flashy in a retail sense. Nobody is going to tweet “new OMS tooling, we are so back” with laser eyes.

But institutions care.

Flow analytics matter.
Execution quality matters.
Risk controls matter.
Routing matters.
Reporting matters.

If you are moving serious size, you do not want vibes. You want infrastructure that does not embarrass you in front of your risk committee.

This is why the institutional push is more important than another retail campaign.

The triparty framework is even more interesting.

Institutional clients do not want to leave a pile of assets sitting directly on an exchange. After everything this industry has lived through, that is not paranoia. That is basic survival instinct.

Counterparty risk is the ghost in every crypto boardroom.

So Binance is offering a structure where institutions can keep fiat or fiat-equivalent collateral with banking partners while still supporting trading activity. That is not just a product feature. It is Binance admitting that institutions want crypto exposure without fully adopting crypto-native custody behavior.

And they are right.

Banks and asset managers do not want to behave like degens.

They want familiar controls, familiar collateral logic and familiar risk boundaries.

Tokenized money market funds from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton fit perfectly into that shift.

This is the part people should pay attention to.

Tokenized RWAs are not interesting because someone put a Treasury fund onchain and made a dashboard. They are interesting when they become useful collateral inside real trading workflows.

That is when tokenization stops being a press release and starts becoming market structure.

If an institution can pledge yield-bearing tokenized fund shares to back trading activity, that is practical. It solves a real problem. Capital does not sit dead. Collateral becomes more flexible. Settlement gets cleaner. Operational drag drops.

That is where RWAs get teeth.

Not in hype threads.
Not in “future of finance” panels.
In collateral.

Chen’s point is blunt and correct: tokenizing an asset does not magically change its fundamentals. A Treasury fund does not become something else because it has a token wrapper. A share does not become more valuable because it moves onchain.

But accessibility changes.
Settlement changes.
Collateral mobility changes.
Operational speed changes.

That is enough.

Sometimes crypto people overcomplicate this. They want tokenization to sound revolutionary. It does not need to. It just needs to make the asset easier to use.

That is the whole game.

The Crypto-as-a-Service product is another piece of the same strategy. Banks and asset managers want digital asset exposure, but many do not want to build wallets, custody, trading systems, compliance tooling, liquidity connections and operational workflows from scratch.

Why would they?

If Binance can package that infrastructure, it becomes the back-end layer for institutions that want crypto access without becoming crypto companies.

That is a serious business line.

And if more than 15 major financial institutions have already approached or used the service, Binance is clearly not just pitching into the void.

Still, there is a massive catch.

Binance wants 3 billion verified active users by 2030. That is not a normal growth target. That is platform-dominance language.

To get there, Binance cannot rely only on traders. It needs crypto to become embedded in regular financial activity: payments, savings, tokenized funds, brokerage-style products, institutional settlement, bank-integrated services and maybe cross-border rails.

That means the Binance of 2030 cannot look like only an exchange.

It has to look like a financial infrastructure company.

That is where the regulatory problem comes back.

Every move deeper into banks, funds and tokenized collateral brings more scrutiny. Binance can build the rails, but institutions will only plug in if the regulatory risk feels manageable. No serious bank wants to explain to regulators why its crypto infrastructure partner became a headline problem.

So the institutional strategy cuts both ways.

It gives Binance a bigger market.

It also forces Binance to operate under heavier expectations.

That is probably unavoidable.

If Binance wants Wall Street scale, it has to accept Wall Street-grade scrutiny.

No way around it.

The competitor backdrop helps explain why Binance is moving now. When rivals are cutting staff or pivoting, infrastructure investment can create distance. Downturns are when market share gets quietly redistributed. The loud part happens later, when conditions improve and users discover who actually kept building.

Chen’s line about bad markets being the best time to build is not original. But in this case, it fits.

The question is whether Binance is building the right things.

My read: yes, mostly.

Not because 3 billion users is guaranteed. It is not. That number is huge and probably depends on crypto becoming far more integrated into everyday financial rails than it is today.

But the direction makes sense.

The next adoption wave needs fewer casino mechanics and more usable infrastructure. It needs institutions to access crypto without rebuilding their entire stack. It needs collateral that moves better. It needs tokenized assets that do something beyond sitting in a wallet. It needs order management that can handle professional flow.

Binance is building toward that.

The risk is that crypto demand stays too cyclical. Institutions may test infrastructure during downturns but only commit heavily when markets recover. Retail may not return in the same way if the last cycle burned too many people. Regulatory pressure may slow rollout. Tokenized collateral may mature slower than Binance expects.

But the setup is still strong.

Binance is making a bet that the next phase of crypto will not be won by whoever has the loudest app. It will be won by whoever owns the rails institutions need when digital assets become normal enough to stop being special.

That is less exciting than a bull-market user chart.

It is also much more durable.

The 3 billion user target is the headline.

The institutional plumbing is the story.

And if Binance gets that plumbing right, the next cycle may not just bring traders back.

It may bring banks in properly.