Why BingX strategy chief Kevin Lee says traders want ‘The Whole Board’

Markets stopped behaving like separate worlds a while ago. A Federal Reserve decision can move Bitcoin, gold, the Nasdaq and the dollar within hours. A geopolitical shock can hit oil before spilling into currencies, equities and crypto. Traders may start with one view of the market, then find that the opportunity appears somewhere else entirely.

Kevin Lee argues that trading platforms are still catching up. The recently appointed Chief Strategy Officer at BingX spent more than 15 years working with exchanges in traditional finance before taking on his current role. Lee’s argument goes beyond instrument count.

“The move was never opportunistic,” he said. “It was structural.”

One macro view, multiple markets

Bitcoin still has its own market dynamics. Lee’s point is that it now reacts more like a high-beta risk asset, especially when macro conditions change.

Federal Reserve research shows that monetary-policy surprises can move equity markets and exchange rates. For traders, that means a macro view rarely belongs to a single asset class. Recent BIS analysis shows how quickly changing macro conditions can reprice currencies, equities, precious metals and energy at the same time.

As Lee puts it, “Traders wanted the whole board.” That premise also runs through BingX’s ‘Connect What’s Moving’ strategy.

“Our evolution into multi-asset is a natural progression for BingX as markets become increasingly interconnected,” Lee said. “Traders today are not necessarily thinking in terms of one asset class. They are looking at the broader market and considering where conditions, narratives and opportunities are developing. Our role is to give them the access, infrastructure and perspective to navigate that landscape from one platform.”

The story starts with the event. The asset can come second.

Crypto rxchanges already have much of the machinery

A modern crypto exchange already operates much of the infrastructure needed to support additional markets. IOSCO notes that centralized crypto platforms commonly combine trading and custody, match customer orders in real time and maintain transactions through internal records.

A Benzinga report based on CoinGecko research found that perpetual futures tied to traditional assets generated $1.32 trillion in volume across crypto exchanges during the first five months of 2026, compared with $104.21 billion across all of 2025.

The same research found that exchanges were adding roughly twice as many TradFi perpetual listings as spot assets. Exposure to gold or an equity index is hardly as simple as listing another ticker. New markets bring their own liquidity and risk-management demands.

Crypto users are also accustomed to faster capital movement and trading outside conventional market hours. A brokerage account rebuilt inside the same app would change little beyond convenience.

The account is where the model changes

“From market open in Australia to market close in India, I used to oversee 12 different equity markets across Asia Pacific in 11 hours, five days a week,” Lee said. Those markets came with different trading hours, rules, currency exposures, funding rails and margin systems.

The friction did not stop at the market level. Capital was also fragmented across separate accounts, each with its own funding process and margin logic.

At BingX, for example, supported traditional-market perpetual futures use USDT as margin through the Futures account. The platform says its TradFi offering now covers more than 500 instruments across stocks, indices, commodities and forex.

A trader already holding USDT in the Futures account can trade supported traditional-asset perpetuals without funding a separate brokerage account. These contracts provide price exposure to the referenced market. A stock-linked perpetual, for example, does not confer ownership of the shares, and leverage gives it a different risk profile from holding the underlying asset.

“A catalogue expansion says ‘we added stocks,’” Lee said. “A model change says ‘your account is now a place from which you can express any view on any market, in one balance, under one risk framework.’”

Then there is the clock

Trading hours were one of the frictions Lee dealt with throughout his traditional-finance career.

Bitcoin does not wait for Monday morning. A geopolitical event on a Saturday does not wait either.

CME Group moved its crypto futures and options to 24/7 trading in May 2026, then extended the same model to 1-Ounce Gold futures in July. More than 7,200 crypto contracts traded during the first weekend of the new schedule, while the first weekend for 1-Ounce Gold drew nearly 15,000 contracts.

BingX currently offers round-the-clock trading on a number of its TradFi perpetual products. Some other contracts remain tied more closely to traditional market hours.

Access outside an underlying market’s conventional session does not make liquidity or pricing risk disappear.

Access still depends on liquidity

Lee says his experience across Asia Pacific, and more recently MENA, showed him that access to U.S. equities or global commodities through conventional brokers can vary widely. Depending on where a trader lives, the process may involve higher costs, more funding friction or fewer available products.

For an existing crypto user, access through the same venue can remove the need to open and fund a separate brokerage account. But wider access only works if there is liquidity when traders need it.

“Liquidity determines whether market access works when traders need it most,” Lee said. “As market opportunities increasingly move across asset classes, traders need more than a long list of assets. They need the liquidity and execution infrastructure to act when markets move.”

A unified account raises the stakes too

A single funded environment puts more weight on security, reserve transparency and risk controls.

BingX says its 100% Proof of Reserves framework and $150 million Shield Fund are part of that protection. They do not change the basic risks of derivatives trading, leverage or holding assets on a centralized platform.

Once traditional-market exposure and extended trading hours sit inside the same account, the old crypto-only label becomes less useful. Markets have already crossed asset-class boundaries, and trading accounts are starting to follow.