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. stocks, these people can get exposure to companies around the world they may not have had access to previously.” 

Today, though many more individuals are banked, roughly 1.3 billion adults globally still lack access to a formal bank account, according to a 2025 World Bank report. Binance, therefore, acts as a so-called shadow bank for savings, yield generation, and cross-border payments, while allowing access to global stocks with low entry thresholds.

Later this month, Binance will roll out Binance AI Pro, an AI-powered crypto trading assistant that automates market analysis, strategy execution, and position management.

Teng expects more trading to shift to AI agents as investors grow more comfortable setting the parameters that guide them. “It has been a great leveler,” he said. “But the nature of trading will be different.”

Where ‘clear rules and regulations’ come from

Binance tapped Teng to serve as its CEO in November 2023, after founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao came under regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. after failing to register as a money-transmitting business and breaching sanctions laws. Following the criminal plea, Binance paid $4.3 billion in penalties and forfeitures, while Zhao personally paid a $50 million fine and served a four-month prison sentence. (He was later pardoned by U.S. President Donald Trump)

Teng started his career on the traditional side of the finance sector, with roles at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank, and the Singapore Exchange. He credits his time at both those institutions for his perspectives on risk and growth.

“If you look at many different regulatory agencies around the world, the key focus is just to mitigate risk, but if you do that to the extreme, that means very minimal or no growth,” Teng explains. At MAS, Teng said he had the dual task of both regulating and growing the financial services sector. “It’s not only about looking at the risk dimension of the ecosystem, but also how you mitigate and manage it in order to support growth,” he adds.

Teng was first exposed to the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies in 2017 during a visit to the U.S. when he was serving as CEO of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market, an international finance center in the United Arab Emirates. 

Teng grew to believe that cryptocurrencies could broaden financial access in emerging markets. “I was blessed to be born and bred in Singapore, where we had access to multiple banks and investment platforms, but many people around the world were not as fortunate.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com