In brief
- Starting Monday, non-U.S. customers on Binance can trade over 7,000 American stocks and ETFs without paying any commissions, with the option to buy fractional shares for as little as $5, as shared by co-CEO Richard Teng.
- The platform also gave a sneak peek at “bStocks,” an upcoming tool that will allow users to create synthetic, tokenized versions of their stock holdings directly on the BNB blockchain.
- Industry analysts view this as a significant step toward merging crypto and traditional finance, though they caution that divided regulations and complex custody structures may slow widespread adoption.
On Monday, the cryptocurrency exchange Binance rolled out access to more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs, while also revealing a roadmap to enable users to turn those shares into blockchain-based tokens.
To non-U.S. clients, the firm is offering commission-free trading and the ability to purchase fractional shares beginning at just $5. This initiative is part of a broader vision to create a “multi-asset financial super app,” co-CEO Richard Teng explained in an interview with Fortune.
Stock purchases will be executed via the broker-dealer Nest Trading, while New York-based Alpaca Securities will handle custody, dividend payouts, and corporate action management. Users can fund their buys using USDC, USDT, BNB, and other digital currencies.
“Major crypto platforms like Binance are stepping into equities because they aim to reduce their reliance on volatile crypto market cycles,” Ivan Patriki, co-founder of analytics firm Quantmap, shared with Decrypt.
Binance’s goal is to keep users’ daily activity within its ecosystem—whether they’re trading Tesla, the S&P 500, stablecoins, or exploring DeFi—so they never need to switch to a traditional broker, Patriki added.
Alongside this launch, Binance introduced “bStocks,” a forthcoming feature designed to let users convert their purchased equities into tokenized assets by minting synthetic representations on the BNB blockchain.
According to the report, Binance’s version, expected in the coming weeks, will empower customers to initiate the tokenization process on their own.
“Tokenized equities have the potential to be a key catalyst for both real-world asset (RWA) adoption and the broader crypto space,” Misha Putiatin, co-founder of the collateral markets platform Symbiotic, told Decrypt.
The true potential, he explained, lies in making stocks fully compatible with DeFi, enabling tokenized shares to be used for lending, collateral, and other yield-generating financial instruments.
Instead of competing with crypto for investment, tokenized stocks could integrate into the same financial ecosystem, offering a stable yield foundation for wider on-chain markets, Putiatin noted.
Vytautas Mackonis, COO of the Swiss-based RWA protocol ALCUM, told Decrypt that Binance’s stock offering is “more structurally intricate than it seems.” Users depend on Binance as the front-end interface, Nest Trading as the executing broker-dealer, and Alpaca Securities as the custodian—a setup that introduces operational risks if regulatory actions or technical failures disrupt access to holdings.
“Tokenized equities represent a genuine and lasting trend,” he stated, but emphasized that their expansion as a major driver of RWA adoption is still limited by “patchy regulations, thin secondary-market liquidity, and the absence of a uniform legal framework clarifying investor protections.”
Just last week, the SEC postponed a planned “innovation exemption” for tokenized assets, raising concerns about third-party tokens—digital share representations issued without the underlying company’s consent—which could complicate dividend distributions and shareholder voting.
Patriki warned that the new model raises critical questions: “Who ensures redeemability? What occurs overnight when Nasdaq is closed? How is the token price kept in sync with the actual stock? And how will regulators respond when retail investors start using tokenized Nvidia shares as collateral in DeFi?”
This evolution, he said, won’t eliminate brokers but will “usher in a hybrid marketplace where brokers, exchanges, banks, and blockchain platforms all vie for the same user funds.”
In February, Binance broadened its tokenization push by listing tokenized assets via Ondo Finance on its Binance Alpha platform, while clarifying that these products “do not confer full shareholder rights, such as voting privileges.”
Meanwhile, rivals have been bolstering their own tokenization approaches. Coinbase embedded Yahoo Finance tickers directly into its platform, letting users trade either the native digital asset or a tokenized stock version as part of its “Everything Exchange” vision.
At the same time, Kraken introduced regulated tokenized equity perpetual futures on the xStocks framework for qualified non-U.S. users, while Nasdaq teamed up with Kraken’s parent company Payward to build tokenized equities on the same xStocks infrastructure, targeting a 2027 rollout.
Daily trading volume for tokenized stocks and ETFs has surged to $1.68 billion, marking a 39% increase over the past month. Monthly transfer volume reached $3.63 billion, up 36%, while the number of holders grew 31% to 292,590, according to data from rwa.xyz.
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