Binance CEO Says Crypto Exchange Will Stay Away From Stock Trading

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, has no interest of offering stock trading services as it is a "pure Web3 company," its CEO said, adding that equity swapping is against his firm's philosophy.

Binance currently has more than 600 cryptocurrencies and virtual tokens listed on its platform along with NFTs. But there are no plans of including stocks in the platform, CEO Chanpeng Zhao, better knows as CZ in crypto circles, said in an interview with Decrypt last week.

Zhao but said adding stocks to a crypto exchange is neither right nor wrong. In May, FTX introduced FTX Stocks, an equities trading platform, available in a private beta phase for select U.S. customers chosen from a waiting list.

"As we grow the product offering and capabilities, we are excited to give our customers even greater choice for order execution, as well as the tools they need to make informed routing decisions," FTX U.S. President Brett Harrison said at that time.

Binance is singing a totally different tune and plans to introduce new Web3 tools in the near future for its users. Despite stock trading proving to be lucrative for platforms such as Robinhood and Webull, CZ is focused on crypto and Web3.

“We don’t have any plans on doing stock trading,” said CZ. “We just think that we’re not running a fiscal broker store anytime soon."

CZ also revealed that the exchange is eyeing a few companies as potential acquisition targets during the crypto winter but those firms are not associated with exchange of traditional equities.

“We are a pure Web3 company,” CZ said. “We’re not going back, we’re moving forward.”