- Binance says it’s now targeting TradFi institutions, whose spending on order management systems annually is $2 billion.
- The exchange says the future of crypto is integrating with Wall Street, not offering a standalone alternative to the centralized rails.
Satoshi Nakamoto may have envisioned Bitcoin as an alternative to traditional finance, but the world’s largest exchange, Binance, says the future lies in catering to Wall Street.
The exchange’s head of VIP and institutional clients, Catherine Chen, admitted that the exchange, and the market in general, have been struggling in recent months. Most exchanges have recorded a massive drop in trading volume, with Coinbase among those that have laid off a sizable number of employees.
The solution is expanding beyond retail, Chen said in a recent interview. She says Binance is now targeting traditional finance (TradFi), a sector that has been increasingly investing in crypto.
One of the sectors she believes has great potential is order management systems (OMS), where TradFi spends over $2 billion annually. In contrast, the crypto sector only spends $185 million on this institutional infrastructure. Binance has launched a new OMS kit to target this sector, building it alongside partners like Coin Metrics and 3Commas.
She stated:
“Financial institutions are increasingly merging with crypto exchanges and blockchain infrastructure providers. They don’t want to be building all that infrastructure themselves.”
Binance Targets Wall Street
Binance’s pivot from retail to Wall Street matches several other crypto firms that have been catering to institutions. Even products that were designed to be crypto-native and decentralized, like Hyperliquid, are now moving farther away from their roots and following the institutional appeal. Hyperliquid is now exploring a partnership with NYSE, an exchange that has been pushing regulators to crack down on it.
Binance is not being left behind as the bear market eats up retail volumes. Chen says the exchange is developing a unified platform that lets institutions purchase crypto and invest in related products, all while not taking care of technical requirements.
Binance has launched a new asset management product that accepts tokenized money market funds from Franklin Templeton and BlackRock, with plans to expand to other Wall Street giants.
But while it now targets institutions, Binance wants to 10x its user base from 310 million users to 3 billion by the end of the decade.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has struggled this week, dipping below $75,000 on Wednesday after an escalation in the Iran conflict. Despite reports of a looming peace deal, BTC has yet to recover, trading just below $74,000.
ETFs have continued to bleed, hitting 10 consecutive days of net outflows, their longest stretch in over a year.
