- Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is offering customers outside the US access to options tied to more than 1,000 US stocks and exchange-traded funds via a partnership with Alpaca Securities LLC, a US-registered broker-dealer, through Binance’s Abu Dhabi entity Nest Trading Limited; Alpaca handles executions, clearing, and custody of orders, with the product adding options to Binance’s existing suite of traditional-asset products including tokenized securities and perpetual futures.
- The growth of traditional assets on crypto exchanges has been extraordinary: monthly volume of perpetual futures tracking traditional assets (stocks, indices, commodities) on Binance grew approximately 15-fold to roughly $445 billion in July from $30 billion in January — and in a striking data point, daily trading volume of perpetual futures tracking Sandisk Corp. recently surpassed that of Bitcoin on Binance, illustrating how far the user preference for TradFi-asset crypto instruments has outpaced expectations.
- Crypto exchanges are building “everything apps” — comprehensive financial platforms that offer crypto, traditional assets, options, futures, and eventually banking and payments — competing directly with brokerages like Robinhood, eToro, and traditional banks; Coinbase and Kraken have started offering similar products, suggesting the convergence of crypto infrastructure with TradFi assets is becoming a structural feature of the industry rather than an experiment.
- Shunyet Jan, Binance’s head of exchange and trading, articulated the logic: “I think using the crypto infrastructure for TradFi assets is very popular and it works very well. We are just giving what our users want and giving more choices” — and noted that options specifically offer advantages perpetual futures do not, including precision around expiration dates and the inability to get liquidated, making them a “more interesting tool for a subset of users” who want sophisticated directional positioning without liquidation risk.
What Happened?
Binance announced a partnership with Alpaca Securities LLC to offer options on more than 1,000 US stocks and ETFs to non-US customers, accessible via Binance’s Abu Dhabi entity. The product is the latest in a series of traditional-asset offerings Binance has added — following tokenized securities and perpetual futures on stocks — as the exchange expands beyond crypto. Monthly volume of traditional-asset perpetual futures on Binance grew from $30 billion in January to $445 billion in July. Coinbase and Kraken are pursuing similar strategies.
Why It Matters?
The 15-fold growth in traditional-asset volume on Binance in seven months is a significant data point about where crypto user demand is actually going. Crypto exchanges built their platforms on the promise of decentralized, borderless, permissionless access to financial instruments — and what users appear to want is to apply that infrastructure to the most liquid traditional assets in the world: US equities and ETFs. This creates a new competitive dynamic for US brokerages: Binance’s non-US customers (who represent the majority of the world’s population and a large share of emerging-market retail investors) can now trade US stock options on crypto rails, potentially bypassing traditional broker-dealer relationships entirely. For regulators, the Alpaca/Binance partnership raises questions about oversight of US securities products offered through offshore entities — a regulatory frontier that the SEC and CFTC have not yet clearly addressed.
What’s Next?
Watch whether Coinbase and Kraken’s comparable offerings gain similar traction in their user bases — if traditional-asset volume on multiple crypto exchanges is growing at this rate, it signals a structural shift in how global retail investors access US equity markets. Also watch for regulatory response: the Alpaca/Binance structure routes US-registered broker-dealer services through an Abu Dhabi entity to non-US customers, a structure that may attract SEC or FINRA scrutiny. And watch Binance’s traditional-asset volume in August — if the 15-fold growth trend continued through the summer, the platform may be handling more traditional-asset volume than many mid-tier US brokerages.
Source: Bloomberg
