Brokers Added Crypto, and Exchanges Answered With Equities
Brokers have spent years bringing digital assets inside. Charles Schwab rolled out bitcoin and ether trading to eligible retail clients on May 13, 2026, through a separate Schwab Crypto account priced at 75 basis points per trade, and Morgan Stanley’s E*Trade started spot crypto trading in July. On the broker side, the asset class usually arrived behind its own account wall.
Exchanges moved the other way, pulling equities into the main account. Binance, for example, added direct US stocks in June 2026, then bStocks tokenized equities and gold and silver options. On September 1, 2026, it launched physically settled options on 1,000-plus selected US stocks and ETFs for eligible users outside the US. Orders route through Nest Trading Limited, Binance’s ADGM-regulated introducing broker, while Alpaca Securities, a US FINRA-member broker-dealer, clears the trades and holds any delivered shares.
The broker’s rulebook came along with the product. Users pass an options suitability quiz and sign a disclaimer, and the first phase allows only long calls and puts placed as limit orders. With crypto, equities and listed derivatives in one account and wallet, the setup is one of the most complete versions of the converged model so far.
“Stock options are an important next step in Binance’s evolution into a fuller multi-asset platform,” says Shunyet Jan, Head of Exchange and Trading at Binance. “By adding options on selected US stocks and ETFs, we are expanding the tools available to users who want to participate in equity markets, manage exposure, and access strategies that have historically been offered through traditional brokers, all from one Binance account.”
That last clause names the boundary in the company’s own words. The harder question is what crossing it obliges a venue to do. Demand had built up well before options arrived: TradFi perpetual futures volume on Binance reached approximately $433.4 billion in August, roughly 15 times January’s level, according to Binance data reported by The Block.
Why Stock Options Were the Last Product to Cross
Putting spot equities on an exchange is mostly a custody and settlement job. Options raise a permissions problem. FINRA Rule 2360 requires firms to collect a customer’s knowledge, experience, financial situation and objectives before approving an options account, get sign-off from a qualified principal, and deliver the Options Clearing Corporation’s risk disclosure document.
Listed US options also clear through the OCC, so any venue offering them needs a clearing member behind it. Alpaca secured OCC clearing membership in August 2025. Writing options is where the danger sits, since sellers can lose far more than the premium they collect, which is why brokers restrict it and why exchange launches normally start with buying alone.
That gate guards a large and growing market. The OCC cleared 15.3 billion contracts in 2025, and US listed options averaged 72.8 million contracts daily in the second quarter of 2026, more than 19% above a year earlier, according to Cboe.
Plenty of crypto exchanges list derivatives on traditional assets, yet “only a few offer options,” as Finance Magnates noted at launch. A perpetual on a stock can be listed in days. A standardized option needs a clearing relationship, a suitability regime and a disclosure process, which makes it a better gauge of how much broker infrastructure an exchange has absorbed than any ticker count. And the market keeps expanding: US options volume is heading for a seventh record year, with a single-day high above 110 million contracts.
What a Converged Venue Owes Its Users
A converged venue can owe its users a broker’s disclosure standards, an exchange’s always-on operation, or some mix of the two. Right now the industry is testing two answers.
One design imports the listed product with its rules and its clock. Binance’s stock options trade only during US options hours, 9:30 am to 4:00 pm ET, with no pre-market or post-market session, making them the most clock-bound product in that account. The other is crypto-native. Binance launched 24/7 options on stock perpetuals on March 26, 2026 and settled in USDT. The first inherits the broker’s protections along with its hours; the second keeps the exchange’s hours and has to build protections of its own.
Incumbents and regulators are edging toward the middle. Nasdaq plans 23/5 equity trading from December 2026. On September 17, 2026, the SEC issued an innovation exemption that lets approved venues trade tokenized stocks carrying full shareholder rights, with issuers given 30 days to object to third-party versions. On September 28, Cboe and S&P Dow Jones Indices extended SPX licensing through 2051 and said they may explore tokenized options contracts, a notable signal from a franchise whose SPX options traded a record 970.6 million contracts in 2025.
Whose Rules Govern a Converged Account
The product line between crypto exchanges and brokerages has largely closed. What still has to be settled is jurisdiction and clearing as well as trading hours and investor protection. How supervisors treat platforms that operate on both sides of the old divide may shape the next phase of market structure more than any single listing.