Binance announced the launch of options contracts on over 1,000 US stocks and exchange-traded funds, available to users outside the United States via a subsidiary called Nest Trading Limited. The product, announced today, will be physically settled through Alpaca Securities and goes live within 48 hours.
The expansion extends Binance's derivative offerings beyond cryptocurrency into traditional equities markets, a category where the exchange has already built substantial volume. Binance's options trading volumes across crypto assets reached approximately $98 billion in August 2026, according to publicly available data, and the platform has grown derivatives as a core revenue stream since 2022.
Nest Trading Limited operates as Binance's licensed subsidiary in the equities space, allowing the exchange to offer stocks and ETFs without directly holding a US broker-dealer license. Alpaca, which provides the clearing and settlement infrastructure, is a FINRA-regulated broker that has expanded its wholesale API offerings to crypto exchanges and offshore trading platforms over the past two years.
The offerings cover US equity options across multiple expiration cycles and strike prices. Binance said in the announcement that the product targets non-US residents, a jurisdictional boundary the exchange has maintained across its derivatives offerings to avoid direct regulatory entanglement with US securities authorities. The geographic restriction mirrors the company's approach to crypto products, which are blocked for US retail users but available internationally.
This marks Binance's third major tradFi product category in twelve months, following the launch of spot US stock trading and US Treasury bill products. Each addition increases the exchange's overlap with conventional brokerages and creates new exposure to securities regulation. The SEC has not issued guidance on whether crypto exchanges offering traditional stock options fall under its jurisdiction, creating regulatory ambiguity that affects how aggressively Binance can market these products to the US market.
Binance's move into equity derivatives follows similar expansion by Kraken and OKX, both of which added US stock trading last year. The number of crypto exchanges offering traditional securities to non-US users has grown from two in 2024 to at least five in 2026, a shift tied partly to lower barriers to entry via outsourced infrastructure providers.
The test for this product is whether non-US users migrate volume from traditional brokers or if the offering remains a marginal feature of Binance's platform. If US regulatory agencies move to prosecute offshore crypto exchanges for offering unregistered securities products to US persons using VPNs or other workarounds, Binance's compliance posture around geographic restrictions will face direct challenge.
