Bybit extends always-on equity trading with options tied to SpaceX and Nvidia perpetuals

Bybit is taking another step in the crypto market’s attempt to repackage equity exposure into an always-open format. The exchange said it will begin offering options on its SpaceX and Nvidia stock perpetuals on Sept. 17, giving users a way to trade listed-style option strategies against crypto-native stock proxies without waiting for U.S. market hours. For RWA watchers, the significance is not only that another exchange is broadening its tradfi menu. It is that crypto venues are steadily building a parallel market structure around equities, where spot-like access, perpetuals, collateral and now options can all live inside the same 24/7 stack.

The product details are unusually explicit. Bybit’s launch notice says the first phase will cover SPCX and NVDA perpetual options, settle in USDT and support fractional sizing with a contract multiplier of one rather than the standard 100-share lot common in traditional U.S. equity options. The company also says the contracts will plug directly into its Unified Trading Account, with portfolio-margin support and multi-leg strategies including spreads, straddles and covered calls. That is a more complete derivatives package than a simple retail listing, because it lets users treat stock-linked instruments as components in a broader collateral and risk-management system rather than isolated bets.

The original report from The Block adds more context around what Bybit is trying to do. According to the report, trading is scheduled to open at 8 p.m. UTC on Sept. 17 and additional expiries are expected to be added over time. The exchange also signaled that Tesla, QQQ, SOXL and Micron are next on the expansion list. In practice, that means Bybit is not framing this as a one-off product test. It is treating options on stock perpetuals as the next layer in a broader shelf of crypto-native equity products that can scale across single names and index-linked exposure.

A second useful signal comes from Bybit’s own market surfaces. Its public NVDAUSDT perpetual page already presents Nvidia as a live tradable perpetual contract with quoted index and mark prices, open interest and turnover, while the company’s broader global-assets landing page advertises access to more than 400 assets across stocks, gold and bonds. Put together, those materials show that the options launch is not being built from scratch. It sits on top of an existing effort to turn conventional financial exposures into exchange-native instruments that can be margined, monitored and traded alongside crypto positions.

That positioning matters for the RWA conversation because the market has moved well beyond the first generation of tokenized stocks, where the core pitch was simply onchain representation or extended-hours access. More recent platforms are building products that behave like a full-service derivatives venue: synthetic or tokenized equity exposure, cross-asset collateral, perpetual contracts and increasingly sophisticated strategy tooling. The Block noted that tokenized-equity perpetual volume grew sharply earlier this year and that SpaceX-linked contracts were among the most actively traded names. Whether every version of that exposure is strictly onchain is almost beside the point for product strategy. The important shift is that crypto infrastructure is absorbing more of the functionality historically associated with brokerages and derivatives exchanges.

There are still clear limits. Bybit’s own disclosures note that its tradfi perpetual contracts are not affiliated with the issuers of the underlying shares or the listing venues, and that liquidity and price behavior can differ outside regular market hours. That caveat matters because 24/7 access is only attractive if traders understand the basis risk, weekend controls and market-structure differences that come with synthetic or exchange-specific wrappers. In other words, these products may widen access and compress operating friction, but they do not erase the underlying complexity of mapping crypto rails onto equity markets.

Even so, the launch is a meaningful marker for where RWA-adjacent market design is heading. If crypto exchanges can successfully layer options onto stock perpetuals, the category starts to look less like a novelty menu and more like an alternate distribution channel for global market exposure. That has implications for tokenized equities, collateral mobility and the competitive boundary between exchanges, brokerages and onchain finance protocols. Bybit’s move will not settle the long-term regulatory or structural questions on its own, but it does show that the race to build always-on capital markets is moving from basic access products toward deeper derivatives infrastructure.