Binance Opens US Stock Trading and Plans To Let Users Tokenize Shares on BNB Chain

Binance, the world’s largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, just made its biggest foray into the TradFi world. The platform opened trading on more than 7,000 US stocks and ETFs on Monday, with zero commission for non-US users and buy orders that start as low as $5. The bigger move sits underneath that. The exchange announced that it plans to let customers turn the shares they buy into tokens on its own BNB blockchain. 

The feature is due in the coming weeks and it’s called bStocks. Co-CEO Richard Teng described it as a way for users to create a synthetic version of a stock by converting it into a digital token. Kraken and Robinhood already run tokenized stock products, but Binance says its version lets customers start the tokenization themselves rather than buy a token that’s already been issued. 

How the Trading Works 

The stock side is done via traditional infra. A broker dealer called Nest Trading arranges the purchases and New York firm Alpaca takes care of the custody, dividends and corporate actions. Customers can pay with stablecoins like USDC and USDT, or with other tokens including BNB. Binance is viewing this move as a step toward becoming a “multi-asset financial super app,” a growing trend among a number of crypto companies pushing into equities. 

Why Tokenizing Matters 

Settlement is the main utility for onchain stocks. A traditional equity trade trade clears through Wall Street intermediaries and takes a day or more to finalize. On the other hand, a tokenized stock settles almost instantly and trades 24/7. Binance framed bStocks as a bridge between traditional shares and always-on assets, with the door open to DeFi uses like lending and liquidity provision later on. 

The Number Behind the Bet 

The timing lines up with where big forecasters see this going. Citi’s Tokenization 2030 report put the tokenized securities market at roughly $17 billion today and projected $5.5 trillion by 2030 in its base case. Tokenized stocks account for $2.6 trillion of that, an estimate resting on about 10% of retail traders moving onto platforms that offer them. Binance, with one of the largest user bases in crypto, is a direct test of that assumption.

There’s a long way to go. Tokenized stocks were worth only about $487 million in total by the end of the first quarter, a rounding error next to the $2.6 trillion target. The institutional side is moving too. The DTCC starts limited tokenized trades in July, and both Nasdaq and the NYSE’s owner have plans of their own. Binance is coming at the same goal from the retail end.

Whether retail users actually tokenize their own shares is the open question. For now, the gap between holding a stock and holding a token keeps narrowing, and the largest crypto exchange just moved to close more of it.