Crypto exchanges are selling stock options and tokenized stocks but users may not own what they think

Bitget launched US stock options this week and says no other major crypto exchange offers them. The product starts with the simplest version of options trading, where eligible users buy single call or put contracts, with more complex strategies planned as it matures.

It sits alongside Bitget's existing crypto markets, tokenized stocks, and contract-for-difference products in gold, forex, and indices.

The launch follows a record stretch in the options market itself. US listed options volume reached 15.2 billion contracts in 2025, up 26% from the prior year and the sixth straight annual record, with roughly 61 million contracts changing hands daily, according to Cboe.

An exchange that built its business on crypto trading now wants a piece of one of the busiest markets in traditional finance.

A stock option is a contract that gives its buyer the right to buy or sell a stock at a set price before a deadline, and it trades under strict US financial rules. A tokenized stock is a version of a stock, or of the money you'd make or lose on one, recorded on a blockchain instead of in a traditional brokerage. What that token legally entitles you to depends entirely on how the company that created it configured it.

Bitget now sells both within one app, which makes it a pretty good test case for distinguishing between them.

What a stock option actually gives a trader

The SEC defines options as contracts that give the purchaser the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a security at a fixed price within a set period.

The way this works is much simpler than the vocabulary used to describe it. Say a stock trades at $100 and a trader expects it to jump after earnings. They can buy a call option with a strike price of $110 for a small upfront premium. The strike is the price the contract is built around, and the premium is what the trader pays for it. If the stock climbs far enough before the option expires, the contract gains value. If it doesn't, the option expires worthless, and the trader loses the premium and nothing more.

A call is a bet that a stock will rise. A put is a bet that it will fall, or a way to protect shares the trader already owns against a drop. For buyers of simple calls and puts, the most they can lose is the premium they paid. Sellers are in a different position because their losses can far exceed the premium they collected, which is why brokerages only allow experienced, approved customers to sell them.

That gap in risk explains why Bitget opened with buying only. More advanced trades, where a user can sell options or combine several at once, stay off the menu for now, so a user's downside is limited to what they spend on the contract.

It's easy to see why options have become so popular. They let a trader control a large stock position for a fraction of what the shares themselves would cost, so a small amount of money rides on a much bigger move. Institutions use them to protect their portfolios, retail traders use them for earnings bets and short-term wagers, and phone-based brokerages put it all a few taps away.

Short-dated contracts drove much of the 2025 record, with same-day options (contracts that expire the day they are traded) making up 24.1% of total US volume, per Cboe and OCC data.

The total value of open Bitcoin options contracts surpassed Bitcoin futures for the first time in January, and demand for these bets continues to reshape what investors actually buy.

The catch is that options are much harder to trade well than they look. An option's price moves with the stock price, the strike, how much time is left before it expires, how sharply the stock tends to swing, and interest rates.

On top of all that, an option loses a little value every day it sits open, simply because the deadline keeps getting closer. A trader can be right about which way the stock goes and still lose money if the move arrives too late or is too small.

Where tokenized stocks split from stock options

Bitget already offers over 500 tokenized stocks. A tokenized stock is not automatically the same as a share sitting in a brokerage account.

Depending on how it is built, the token can stand for a real share that a custodian holds on the buyer's behalf, a claim that simply tracks the stock's price while granting none of the rights that come with owning it, a private deal with the issuer that only copies the price movement, or an official record of share ownership kept on a blockchain.

SEC staff defined this in a January 28 statement, describing tokenized securities as regular securities recorded, in whole or in part, on a blockchain. Their main point was that what a product actually does, not what it is called, decides how it is regulated.

A share stays a share in the eyes of the law whether it sits in a traditional brokerage system or on a blockchain. And a token created by an outside firm that only mimics a stock's price can even count as a security-based swap, a category of contract that US markets keep on a very short leash.

The difference from options comes down to what each product actually is. A stock is a piece of ownership in a company. A tokenized stock wraps that ownership, or just the price, in a blockchain token that can move between wallets and platforms.

A stock option is one more step removed: a contract whose value rides on a stock, with no ownership involved at all. Listed US options also trade inside a tightly supervised system of exchanges, brokers, and clearinghouses, the middlemen who guarantee that trades actually settle.

Tokenized stocks come with open questions that the buyer often cannot see, and the answers change from one token to the next: who actually holds the underlying share, whether the holder collects dividends or gets to vote, whether the token can be traded back for the real share, and what happens to the holder if the issuer or custodian goes under.

Regulators have been struggling to work through that gap. Reuters reported on June 17 that the SEC is preparing an “innovation exemption” that would allow crypto companies to offer tokenized stock trading, with Citadel Securities and the industry group SIFMA pushing back on how well investors would be protected and how the market would hold up.

That exemption could move regular stocks onto blockchain systems and force exchanges to answer what token holders actually own.

Sizing Bitget's new options market is harder than describing it. The company claims 125 million users, but the announcement names no supported stocks, no list of countries where the product is available, no clearing arrangements, and no volume expectations. So the real market is the smaller group of users who get approved for the product, understand the risks, and want US stock exposure inside a crypto account.

Even a small slice of that base could add up to real activity, though how smoothly the options actually trade will depend more on the firms that provide prices and fill orders than on the raw user count.

A standard listed option, settled through the Options Clearing Corporation, as with every contract at a US brokerage, comes with a known set of protections and a clearinghouse standing behind the trade. An option-style product built through other arrangements might behave the same on a good day and very differently on a bad one, and Bitget's announcement doesn't say which one it is selling.

The tokenized stocks carry the same ambiguity, since their value to a holder rests on rights the token may or may not actually grant.

Convergence has made these products easy to buy in a single app, and it has done nothing to make them easy to tell apart. That job still falls to securities law, and for now, the exchanges that put everything on one screen are the ones saying the least about what lies beneath each asset.

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