Crypto exchanges and traditional brokerages have historically occupied very different corners of financial markets. One grew around digital assets, 24/7 trading and globally accessible infrastructure; the other around equities, clearing, custody and established capital-market systems.

Increasingly, those worlds are beginning to overlap.

Digital-asset platforms are expanding the range of financial products available to their users, while brokerage infrastructure providers are making it easier for fintechs and other digital platforms to offer access to traditional markets without building the entire underlying stack themselves.

Bybit’s expansion into U.S. equities through Alpaca sits at the intersection of those trends.

We spoke with Ben Zhou,…