Binance’s Alpaca disclosure offers a clearer look at the economics behind tokenized stock distribution

Binance has disclosed more detail on the commercial model behind its move into stocks and tokenized equities, giving the market a rare look at how exchange distribution, brokerage infrastructure and tokenized securities custody can fit together. Cointelegraph reported that Binance’s securities trading terms describe a revenue-sharing arrangement with Alpaca, the brokerage and custody infrastructure provider that supports Binance’s stock trading product and is also a significant service provider in tokenized US stocks and exchange-traded funds. For RWA market participants, the importance is not just that Binance is adding another product line. It is that the company is showing how tokenized equity access may actually be monetized.

According to the report, Binance is set to receive 50% of Alpaca’s payment-for-order-flow fees and 65% of the remaining profit from user stock lending after users are paid interest. Those details matter because tokenized equities are often discussed mainly in terms of access, programmability and 24/7 distribution. The Binance-Alpaca structure highlights a more traditional reality: once tokenized stocks move closer to mainstream brokerage activity, the economics can start to resemble the conventional securities business, with revenue tied to execution flow, custody and lending rather than token issuance alone.

Cointelegraph said Alpaca has become a major infrastructure provider in tokenized US stocks and ETFs and raised $150 million at a $1.15 billion valuation in January. The report adds that Alpaca held $480 million in assets under custody at the end of 2025, representing about 29% of a tokenized stock market valued at $1.62 billion, based on RWA.xyz data cited in the story. That provides a useful benchmark for the segment. Tokenized equities remain small relative to traditional public markets, but the infrastructure layer already appears valuable enough to command scale economics, strategic distribution partnerships and venture-level pricing.

The market growth figures in the article point in the same direction. Cointelegraph reported that the total value of tokenized stocks rose roughly 29% over the previous 30 days, while the number of holders climbed 35% to 304,700. At the same time, monthly active addresses fell more than 77% to 31,877, suggesting that investors are accumulating and holding positions rather than trading them heavily. That pattern is worth noting because it implies tokenized equities are not yet behaving like a fully mature onchain trading venue. Instead, they look more like an access product still building distribution, user trust and secondary-market depth.

The Binance disclosure also lands in the middle of a broader competitive push. The report says Binance has launched access to more than 7,000 US-listed stocks and ETFs and has previewed a future tokenized stock product called bStocks. Other exchanges are moving as well: Bitget has rolled out a proxy offering linked to SpaceX’s pre-IPO phase, Bitpanda is expanding into thousands of stocks and ETFs, and Kraken earlier introduced US-listed equities as part of its effort to combine digital assets and traditional markets on one platform. That makes this story bigger than one commercial contract. It is evidence that exchanges increasingly see tokenized equities as a strategic adjacency to their core crypto businesses.

For RWA builders, the takeaway is that the next stage of tokenized equity growth will be shaped as much by market structure as by product design. Distribution partnerships, custody capacity, order routing and securities-lending economics are becoming visible parts of the stack. Binance’s arrangement with Alpaca does not resolve the long-term regulatory and liquidity questions around tokenized stocks, but it does sharpen the picture of how major platforms expect the business to work. As tokenized equities move from headline demos toward repeatable brokerage infrastructure, that visibility is a meaningful development in its own right.