Not long ago, the typical crypto exchange did one thing. It matched buyers with sellers, collected a fee, and moved on. The technology was novel, the assets were new, and the business model was simple. That simplicity is rapidly becoming a relic.

The exchanges that dominate the market today look less like the trading platforms that defined crypto’s early years and more like financial services companies that happen to have started with digital assets. They offer savings products, cross-border transfers, lending, digital wallets, and increasingly, access to the same stocks, bonds, and funds that have been the core of traditional finance for decades. The boundaries that once separated crypto infrastructure from the broader financial…