Bybit Launches 1,000+ US Stocks and ETFs With USDC Settlement

Bybit opened trading in more than 1,000 US-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds on Monday, with customers paying for purchases in the USDC stablecoin. The Dubai-based crypto exchange said orders are executed by Alpaca, a US broker-dealer that also holds the shares in custody. The launch marks a shift in how the company packages equity exposure for its users.

Until now, Bybit's equity offering has been derivative-based. Since June 2025 it has listed stock contracts for difference on Apple, Tesla and 76 other names, and the new service instead gives clients an economic interest in the underlying securities, according to the release. Stock CFDs remain available on a separate MetaTrader 5 account, alongside 24/7 FX perpetuals that Bybit listed last month.

The service runs through Infra Capital Limited, an introducing broker regulated by the Financial Services Commission of Mauritius, while Alpaca Securities LLC, a FINRA member, handles clearing, settlement and custody. Bybit said clients can buy fractional shares, trade through US pre-market and after-hours sessions and pay no commission on eligible trades. Cash dividends are converted from dollars into USDC and credited to the client's Unified Trading Account, with voting rights planned for a later phase. Access is restricted to verified clients in permitted jurisdictions, which the release did not name.

Co-founder and CEO Ben Zhou linked the rollout to the New Financial Platform plan Bybit outlined in January, which folded banking and custody into its trading business. He said stocks are an important part of that evolution, according to the exchange, which claims more than 80 million users. Traditional-finance perpetuals have been the fastest-growing segment on crypto venues this year: equity-linked perpetual contracts reached $141 billion in volume in June, up from $45 billion in May, according to TokenInsight data.

Bybit is not the first crypto venue to route equities through Alpaca. Kraken signed up the broker in April 2025 to execute trades in more than 11,000 US stocks and ETFs for American clients, and Kraken's parent Payward joined Canadian bank BMO in providing $300 million of debt within a $435 million financing package for Alpaca in July. Kraken then opened more than 7,000 US equities to clients in the European Economic Area in August under a MiFID II authorization held by its Cypriot entity.

Some crypto-native firms argue traders prefer leverage to ownership. Kaledora Kiernan-Linn, CEO of onchain derivatives venue Ostium, told FinanceMagnates.com in February that DeFi would disrupt the CFD broker market within five years, pointing to capital efficiency and arguing that traders betting on earnings or macro events do not want to lock up capital in shares. Ostium followed in April with CFD-style trading in stocks, commodities and FX from clients' own wallets, hedged through institutional partners including Jump, and puts the CFD market at $10 trillion in monthly volume.