Bybit has launched trading in more than 1,000 US stocks and exchange-traded funds, and is developing a tokenised equity product called mStocks in collaboration with Mantle, as the Dubai-headquartered exchange accelerates its expansion beyond crypto markets. Chief executive Ben Zhou outlined the plans at the company’s biannual “Keynote with Ben” session on 14 October.
The stock trading product, which went live on 12 October, allows eligible users to buy and sell US equities using USDC, with fractional share support and 24-hour, five-day access that covers pre-market, regular and after-hours sessions. The product sits within Bybit’s existing Unified Trading Account, which already supports crypto derivatives and foreign exchange.
mStocks and the tokenised equity layer
The more structurally novel move is mStocks, which Bybit is targeting for a November launch. The product is described as a tokenised stock backed one-to-one by real underlying securities, with planned support for round-the-clock conversion between eligible stocks and mStocks. Converted tokens would also be usable as collateral within the Unified Trading Account and tradeable through automated market maker liquidity pools on the Mantle network.
Bybit also offers IPO Express, launched in June, which gives eligible users access to selected initial public offering opportunities at the offering price through tokenised representations. The company said the service launched with SpaceX as the first available offering, extending its reach from secondary to selected primary markets.
The company says its TradFi perpetuals business has recorded more than 180 billion dollars in cumulative trading volume since it entered CFD markets in 2022, and its catalogue now spans more than 600 instruments across equities, indices, commodities and FX. It has also launched Forex Perps and Perp Options, a derivatives structure it describes as industry-first, built on top of TradFi perpetuals rather than spot prices.
Regulatory and competitive context
The regulatory backdrop for this model is complex. Tokenised securities fall under securities law in most jurisdictions, and cross-border platforms face fragmented licensing requirements. Bybit said it secured five new licences and regulatory approvals during 2026, across the European Union, the Cayman Islands, Indonesia, South Africa and El Salvador, though it did not name the specific licence categories or the product lines they cover. That ambiguity matters: whether mStocks constitutes a security, a derivative or a stablecoin-adjacent instrument will determine where it can be offered and under which disclosure regime.
Several competitors are pursuing adjacent strategies. Robinhood has moved to extend its crypto and equities offering across European markets, while Coinbase has flagged interest in expanding into derivatives and equities products for international users. Traditional prime brokers and retail platforms including Interactive Brokers have meanwhile integrated crypto custody and trading alongside conventional equities, compressing the differentiation Bybit seeks. The exchange’s distinctive angle is the collateral interoperability between crypto and stock positions within a single account structure, a feature that has real appeal for active traders but that also raises margin and risk management questions regulators will scrutinise closely.
Bybit also said it intercepted more than 30,000 suspicious withdrawal requests in the first half of 2026, representing more than 700 million dollars in protected assets, and launched Bybit AI in September as a conversational assistant across trading, account management and customer support.
Ben Zhou framed the direction in broad terms: “We have brought trading, investing, payments and AI together, and we are continuing to add more markets and more ways to use them.”
The company says its Bybit Card and Bybit Pay services now reach more than 5,000 merchants across more than 15 countries, with more than four million cards issued. The payments infrastructure appears designed to extend platform stickiness beyond the trading session, though the commercial model for the card programme and the unit economics of the merchant network were not disclosed.
The next markers to watch are the jurisdictions in which mStocks launches, the regulatory classification Bybit receives for the product, and whether the IPO Express pre-market offering expands beyond its initial single-issuer format.
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