CoinDesk
Binance is shifting its growth thesis away from pure crypto trading and toward becoming a payments-first super app, with stablecoins as the connective tissue, according to Shunyet Jan, Binance's head of spot trading and derivatives. Speaking with CoinDesk around the exchange's ninth anniversary, Jan framed the company's next leg of expansion in WeChat-style terms: a single platform where users can trade, pay, and access financial products without leaving Binance.
Jan pointed to stablecoin adoption beyond trading, including payments and transfers, as the source of a much larger addressable market. "If you think of us as a payment provider, then that number becomes much bigger," he said. The push mirrors Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's repeated framing of his own exchange as a future super app, with Coinbase reiterating that goal in 2025.
Binance spent the past year expanding beyond trading, adding tokenized stocks, exchange-traded funds, and other financial services. Jan said demand is strongest in emerging markets, where some users hold most of their assets on the platform because they "trust us more than the local government or local banks." CEX volumes also rose in June for the first time in five months, with spot climbing 15.3 percent to $1.11 trillion.
Why it matters
Jan's framing repositions Binance from a venue competing for order flow to a platform competing for everyday financial activity. That is the same arc Coinbase has been pushing publicly since 2023, and the fact that both of the world's largest centralized exchanges are now narrating in payments language suggests the industry's next capital cycle is being defined off-platform rather than on-platform. Banks and payment firms increasingly treat stablecoins as settlement infrastructure rather than just trading collateral, which keeps the door open for CEX-native wallets to capture a slice of that flow.
Market impact
The strategic pivot does not change Binance's near-term revenue mix, but it sets the narrative competitors and regulators will read it against.
Frequently asked questions
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What is Binance's super app strategy exactly?
Binance head of spot trading and derivatives Shunyet Jan told CoinDesk the exchange wants to evolve from a pure crypto venue into a payments-first super app, offering trading, tokenized stocks, ETFs and other financial services inside one platform.
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Why does Binance see stablecoins as central to its next phase?
Jan argued stablecoin usage for payments and transfers is still expanding and addresses a far larger user pool than trading, saying Binance should be measured as a payment provider rather than just an exchange.
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Is Coinbase pursuing a similar super app goal?
Yes. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong first floated the super app idea in 2023 and reiterated the long-term goal in 2025, comparing the vision to Tencent's WeChat, which has about 1.4 billion users.
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How are emerging markets central to Binance's growth pitch?
Jan said demand is strongest in emerging markets where some users have limited access to local banks or investment products and in some cases trust the exchange more than domestic institutions, keeping core assets inside the Binance ecosystem.
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What did June CEX trading data show about Binance's backdrop?
Centralized exchange volumes rose for the first time in five months in June, with spot climbing 15.3 percent to $1.11 trillion and real-world asset perpetual volumes hitting a record $311 billion.
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