Bitget's stock products blur the line between trading and ownership

Crypto exchanges are moving deeper into stock trading, but the product label may say less than investors assume. Bitget this week added US stock options, starting with basic call and put buying for eligible users. That puts listed-style options next to tokenized stocks and other derivatives already offered in the same app.

The distinction matters. A stock option is a contract tied to a share price, not ownership of the share itself. Buyers of simple calls and puts can only lose the premium they pay, which helps explain why Bitget limited the launch to option buyers rather than sellers. The move comes as demand for options keeps rising. Cboe said US listed options volume hit 15.2 billion contracts in 2025, up 26% from a year earlier.

Bitget also offers more than 500 tokenized stocks, and those can mean very different things depending on how they are structured. A token may represent a real share held by a custodian, a claim that only tracks price, a private contract with the issuer, or a blockchain record of actual ownership. Rights such as dividends, voting, redemption into shares, and protection if an issuer fails can vary from one product to another.

That is the problem for users: stock exposure is easy to buy in one screen, but what they legally own is often much less clear.