Crypto exchange Binance opened access to more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs on Monday and laid out plans to let users convert those shares into blockchain tokens.
The company is offering zero-commission trades to non-U.S. customers and fractional purchases starting at $5 as part of an ambition to build a “multi-asset financial super app,” co-CEO Richard Teng told Fortune
Share purchases will be facilitated through broker-dealer Nest Trading, New York-based Alpaca Securities will provide custody, dividend distribution, and corporate action services, with purchases supported via USDC, USDT, BNB, and other digital assets. “Large crypto exchanges such as Binance are entering the stock market because they no longer want to be dependent on market cycles,” Ivan Patriki, co-founder of analytics platform Quantmap, told Decrypt. Binance wants to take away daily user balance “from brokers and ensure that users don’t leave the app for Tesla, the S&P 500, stablecoins, or DeFi,” Patriki added. Alongside the launch, Binance described “bStocks,” a coming feature that will let users tokenize the equities they buy by minting synthetic versions on its BNB blockchain.
Binance said its version, due in the coming weeks, will let customers start the tokenization process themselves, according to the report. “Tokenized stocks could become a major driver of both RWA adoption and crypto more broadly,” Misha Putiatin, co-founder of collateral markets platform Symbiotic, told Decrypt. The real opportunity lies in making equities fully composable with DeFi, allowing tokenized stocks to support lending, collateral, and other yield-generating financial products, he said. Rather than competing with crypto for capital, tokenized equities could become part of the same financial stack, providing a predictable yield base for broader on-chain markets, Putiatin added.