TL;DR:
Binance Research published a report projecting that cryptocurrency exchanges could channel up to $2 trillion in incremental capital and bring nearly 300 million new investors into global equity markets by 2031.
The estimate is based on a top-down model that takes total crypto users worldwide as its starting point, applies coverage, eligibility and adoption rates to estimate the number of active stock traders, and multiplies that figure by the average position size. The optimistic scenario raises that figure to $5 trillion in annual flows toward equities within five years.
The analysis begins with a structural asymmetry: while around 62% of Americans hold stocks directly, through mutual funds or retirement accounts, participation in equity markets outside the United States remains below 20% of the population. Although U.S. stocks represent approximately half of global market capitalization, foreign investors control just 18% of that market.
Early data from Binance’s stock trading product are central to its reading. Around 93% of its early users come from emerging markets, where geographic restrictions and limited access to brokerage services have historically constrained public participation. Stock tokenization emerges as the key mechanism: it enables the fractionalization of securities whose unit price can exceed several months of average wages in regions across Africa and South Asia, turning what was once a near-insurmountable barrier into an accessible entry point.
The report also highlights the role of stablecoins as a settlement layer for continuous stock trading. Perpetuals linked to traditional finance assets already account for approximately 10% of total trading volume in stablecoins. According to Binance Research, that share is set to grow as direct stock trading and tokenized equity markets mature.
Binance acknowledges, however, that the projections are far from certainties. The actual magnitude of flows will depend on regulatory progress across jurisdictions, the pace of user adoption and the effective expansion of tokenized equity markets at a global scale.
