Binance’s expansion beyond cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly visible in its derivatives market, with traditional financial assets accounting for a significant share of the exchange’s most actively traded perpetual contracts.
A snapshot of Binance’s 15 largest perpetual contracts by 24-hour volume on August 19 showed that roughly two-thirds were tied to traditional assets, including individual stocks, ETFs and commodities. The remaining contracts were dominated by major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.
The list was led by the SANDUSDT perpetual contract, which tracks SanDisk. The contract generated approximately $6.87 billion in trading volume over 24 hours as of 9:00 a.m. UTC on August 19. That represented roughly 22% of SanDisk's trading volume on Nasdaq over the same period.
Silver was another prominent traditional-market asset among Binance's highest-volume contracts. Its XAGUSDT perpetual recorded approximately $826 million in 24-hour trading volume.
The figures illustrate how quickly perpetual contracts linked to traditional assets have gained traction on crypto-native exchanges. Rather than being limited to Bitcoin and other digital currencies, traders can increasingly use the same derivatives infrastructure to speculate on or hedge exposure to stocks, exchange-traded funds and commodities.
Binance expanded its TradFi perpetual offering throughout 2026, adding exposure to U.S. equities, ETFs and precious and industrial metals. The contracts use USDT as margin and can be traded around the clock, extending a trading model familiar to crypto users into markets that traditionally operate according to fixed exchange hours.
“The shift validates Binance’s stated mission to make its platform a multi-asset financial super app where users can access crypto, tokenized securities, and traditional asset classes within a single account. By offering USDT-margined perpetual contracts on stocks, ETFs, commodities and more, Binance has effectively extended crypto-style round-the-clock trading to assets that were previously confined to traditional market hours,” said Shunyet Jan, Head of Exchange and Trading at Binance.
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Equity perps accelerate the crypto-TradFi convergence
The growing presence of traditional assets in Binance's derivatives rankings reflects a broader change across centralized crypto exchanges.
Weekly trading volume for stock-linked perpetual contracts has reportedly increased by roughly 79 times since the beginning of 2026. Binance has emerged as the leading venue for these products, accounting for approximately 76% of equity perpetual volume across tracked exchanges in July.
Such growth points to demand for an instrument that combines characteristics of traditional equity exposure with the mechanics of crypto derivatives. Traders can take long or short positions, use leverage and trade continuously, including outside the operating hours of the underlying stock exchange.
This structure also creates opportunities for cross-market strategies. A trader could, for example, use a gold perpetual to hedge part of a portfolio exposed to risk assets, take a leveraged position on a technology company, or move between crypto and equity-related trades without transferring funds to a separate brokerage platform.
Binance's TradFi expansion extends beyond perpetual contracts. The exchange also offers access to more than 7,000 U.S. stocks and ETFs, alongside tokenized securities and commodity-related derivatives.
The growing overlap between these products suggests that crypto exchanges are increasingly competing on the breadth of financial markets available through a single account rather than solely on the number of cryptocurrencies they list.
For traders, the appeal lies partly in convenience. Stablecoin-based settlement, familiar derivatives interfaces and continuous trading allow traditional assets to be incorporated into workflows originally developed for crypto markets.
The model nevertheless introduces differences that traders need to account for. A perpetual contract referencing a stock or commodity remains a derivative rather than direct ownership of the underlying asset.
Trading conditions, pricing, funding mechanisms, liquidity and corporate actions can also differ substantially from those of conventional securities markets.
Still, the composition of Binance's highest-volume contracts provides a visible indication of where crypto trading infrastructure is heading.
As exchanges add more stocks, ETFs, commodities and other traditional instruments, the boundary between cryptocurrency derivatives venues and broader multi-asset trading platforms is becoming increasingly difficult to define.
U.Today Editorial Team
Dan Burgin
