Binance weighs stock access in markets including Hong Kong and South Korea, says co-CEO Richard Teng

Binance is considering offering exposure to stocks from markets including Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Brazil as the world’s largest crypto exchange pushes beyond digital assets and seeks to become an all-in-one trading platform , co-CEO Richard Teng told Fortune .

“We are weatherproofing ourselves,” Teng said on the sidelines of TOKEN2049 in Singapore.

“A lot of our users say: ‘Hey, I want to have exposure to, let’s say, the top 10 Hong Kong stocks, top 10 Korean counters, top 10 Taiwanese, Brazilian counters.’ We’re looking at what our users demand and giving them that.” In 2026, Binance introduced trading in tokenized U.S. stocks and commodity derivatives, including precious metals and oil.

The exchange also rolled out pre-IPO perpetual futures contracts settled in USDT, a U.S.-dollar-linked stablecoin, giving traders the ability to speculate on the expected valuation of private companies like Anthropic.

Sitting behind this shift is a slump in digital asset prices .

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency prices remain far below the highs reached in October 2025.

Coinbase, for example, posted a net loss of $359.5 million in Q2 2026, its third consecutive quarterly net loss, as transaction revenue declined.

Several cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, are transforming themselves from apps devoted to coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum into platforms that can handle different asset classes .

Coinbase rolled out traditional stock trading, perpetual futures, and prediction markets on its platform last December as part of its push to become an “everything exchange.” OKX last week revealed plans to both offer tokenized shares in dozens of U.S. companies (through a joint venture with Intercontinental Exchange), as well as launch a new app for U.S.-dollar-linked stablecoins .

Traditional financial companies are embracing digital assets, while crypto platforms must accept clearer rules to attract institutional money .

“The first 3% of [crypto] adopters didn’t need certainty, and they didn’t want certainty,” Teng said.

“But for crypto to go mainstream, we need not just retail investors, but also sophisticated institutions that want clear rules and regulations they can operate within.” Teng casts tokenized stocks and round-the-clock trading as ways to give investors outside major financial centers greater access to global markets .

“Many people are still constrained by the geography that they are born in,” Teng said, pointing to how those born in emerging markets in Africa or Latin America may still lack access to U.S. stocks, despite the U.S. being the world’s largest capital market.

“If we tokenize U.S.