New CEO Stephen Gregory is steering the exchange beyond spot crypto trading into prediction markets and derivatives after its US market share collapsed from 20 per cent to almost nothing following a $4.3 billion federal penalty and years of regulatory turmoil.
Binance.US has a new chief executive, a clean-ish regulatory slate, and a market share that rounds to zero. Stephen Gregory, a compliance veteran who took the top job last month, is now tasked with rebuilding an exchange that was once the dominant force in American crypto trading — and doing it in a market that has moved on without it.
Gregory's diagnosis is blunt: spot trading alone won't be enough. In an interview with CoinDesk published this week, he outlined a strategy that pivots the exchange into prediction markets — which he called "super hot" — and derivatives, mirroring moves already underway at Coinbase, Kraken, and a wave of newer entrants. The logic is sound, if not exactly original. Trading commissions across the crypto industry are compressing toward zero, following the same trajectory that gutted equity brokerage margins a decade ago. Exchanges that don't diversify will find themselves competing on price for a product that's increasingly commoditised.
The numbers illustrate the scale of the problem. At its peak in 2022, Binance.US commanded roughly 20 per cent of the American crypto market. Today, according to CoinDesk Indices data, that figure is near zero. The collapse wasn't gradual; it was the direct consequence of a regulatory implosion that began with the SEC's lawsuit in June 2023 and culminated in founder Changpeng Zhao pleading guilty to Bank Secrecy Act violations and the parent company paying a $4.3 billion penalty — the largest in the history of crypto enforcement.
Zhao himself received a presidential pardon after serving four months in federal prison, but the reputational damage to the US arm lingers. Gregory insists the American entity now operates independently from Binance's global exchange, with what he describes as "very, very strong" compliance infrastructure. Whether the market believes that claim is the central question facing the exchange's revival.
The competitive landscape has shifted dramatically during Binance.US's absence. Coinbase has been building what it calls an "everything exchange" — expanding into derivatives, tokenised equities, and institutional prime brokerage. Kraken launched tokenised stock futures for non-US traders. Charles Schwab is preparing to offer spot crypto trading to its $12 trillion client base. Each of these competitors spent the past two years gaining regulatory credibility while Binance.US was fighting for survival.
Gregory's background suggests Binance.US is taking the compliance-first approach seriously, even if the sincerity will take time to prove. Before joining the exchange, he served as US CEO of Currency.com and led the platform through its 2025 acquisition. At Gemini, he worked as a compliance officer during the exchange's early expansion, building frameworks for anti-money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act compliance. His appointment signals that the board — whatever its composition — understands that the path back runs through regulators' offices, not marketing departments.
Prediction markets offer a strategically interesting entry point. The sector has exploded since Polymarket demonstrated during the 2024 US presidential election that real-money prediction markets could attract mainstream attention and serious volume. Regulatory clarity remains imperfect, but the CFTC has shown a willingness to permit certain event contracts, and a Senate bill currently in committee would expand the agency's jurisdiction and funding to oversee them more formally.
The harder question is whether Binance.US can attract liquidity back to a platform that traders abandoned years ago. Liquidity begets liquidity in exchange economics; once it leaves, rebuilding it requires either a compelling product advantage or aggressive fee subsidies — neither of which is easy to sustain. Gregory hasn't disclosed specific timelines for the prediction market or derivatives launches, and the regulatory approvals required for both products in the US are non-trivial.
What Binance.US does have is name recognition — for better and worse — and a parent company with deep pockets and global infrastructure. If Gregory can execute the pivot without triggering another regulatory backlash, the exchange has a plausible path back to relevance. But plausible and probable are different things, and the graveyard of crypto exchanges that promised compliance-driven turnarounds is already well populated.
