Binance is making another attempt to blur the lines between digital assets and traditional markets. In an announcement Monday, the company said its users will soon be able to trade more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
It also included a plan to let customers convert the stocks they hold into tokenized, crypto-like digital assets, as part of what Binance describes as a broader effort to move toward a “multi-asset financial super app.”
Binance aims for ‘friction-free’ stock trading
Speaking to Fortune, Richard Teng, co-CEO of Binance, highlighted why the move is mainly aimed at customers outside the United States. The executive power said U.S. stocks already account for more than half of the global stock market, but for many foreign investors, buying them can come with high costs and friction.
Binance’s solution, according to Teng, is to offer commission-free stock trading for non-US users, along with fractional share purchases starting at $5, lowering both the price barrier and the complexity of participation.
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Operationally, Binance said so new stock trading service will be set up with support from a broker-dealer called Nest Trading. For the custody and settlement functions, a New York-based company, Alpaca, is expected to handle custody and facilitate dividend distributions and corporate actions.
Customers can fund stock purchases with stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC stablecoin or Tether’s USDT, as well as a selection of other digital currenciesincluding Binance’s BNB.
In addition to the trading program, Binance also introduced a more ambitious concept: ‘bStocks’. The company’s position is that bStocks offers users the ability to tokenize stocks they purchase.
Hyperfluid can feel the heat
According to Teng’s explanation, this would work by creating a synthetic, digital token representation of certain stocks – achieved by converting the stocks into tokens on Binance’s website. BNB blockchain. The company says this functionality is expected to become available in the coming weeks.
While other major platforms have experimented with similar models in the past year, Binance claims its approach could stand out in one key way.
Competitors like Kraken and Robinhood have launched offerings in this area, but Binance says its bStocks plan is potentially different because it would allow customers to initiate the tokenization process themselves rather than relying solely on the platform’s preset conversion paths.
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The announcement of the fair has also led to reactions. On X (formerly Twitter), analyst Zero Kyle argued that the development could be negative for the decentralized exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid (HYPE).
Kyle’s view was that while the expanded availability is not necessarily “24/7-like” as Hyperliquid’s trading platforms in the way some trading systems are structured, Binance will likely intensify competition and could create a head-to-head battle for market share.
The analyst added that the news may not be “bad for HYPE the token” specifically, but it is “bad for Hyperliquid the exchange” due to increased competition.
Meanwhile, the exchange’s native token, BNB, was trading at $692 at the time of writing. This mirrors the broader crypto market’s retracement on Monday, down 2.3% year to date.
Featured image created with OpenArt; chart from TradingView.com