A new Binance Research report argues that crypto’s next growth phase may be defined less by speculation and more by its role as financial infrastructure for people and markets underserved by traditional banking.
The report, “Finance Without Frontiers,” frames on-chain finance as a response to structural gaps in global financial access. According to Binance Research, citing World Bank data, around 1.3 billion adults remain unbanked, while the underbanked population is even larger: 4.7 billion adults lack access to credit or loans, 3.6 billion adults in low- and middle-income countries do not use digital payments or cards, and 1.4 billion savers in those markets earn no interest on deposits.
For the digital asset industry, the significance is clear. Crypto adoption is no longer only a matter of trading demand. In many markets, it is becoming a workaround for limited access to savings products, payments, cross-border transfers, and capital markets.
Mobile access changes the inclusion equation
One of the report’s central arguments is that the distribution problem that historically limited financial inclusion has changed. Physical bank branches, correspondent banking networks, and domestic brokerage systems remain unevenly distributed. Mobile phones, however, are far more widespread.
Binance Research states that 900 million unbanked adults own a mobile phone, while 530 million own a smartphone. That means a large share of financially excluded users already have the hardware needed to access wallets, exchanges, stablecoin payments, and other mobile-native financial tools.
This does not remove the need for regulation, consumer protection, or usable interfaces. But it does shift the bottleneck. The challenge is less about building physical financial distribution and more about creating compliant, reliable, low-cost digital access.
Stablecoins target the remittance cost problem
The strongest practical use case in the report is cross-border payments.
Traditional remittance corridors remain costly, especially for smaller transfers. Binance Research notes that cross-border SWIFT transactions can cost a minimum of $20 and settle over several days. By contrast, stablecoin transfers on high-performance networks can cost as little as $0.0001 and settle near instantly.
That difference matters most for low- and middle-income markets, where remittance amounts are often small and fixed fees become highly regressive. In this context, stablecoins are not simply a crypto-native product. They are competing with legacy payment rails on cost, speed, and availability.
The report also highlights the scale of stablecoin usage, stating that adjusted stablecoin volume surpassed Visa in 2024 and is approaching $8 trillion in monthly volume, based on Artemis data cited by Binance Research.
For brokers, payment companies, fintech platforms, and exchanges, this is an important market-structure signal. Stablecoins are increasingly functioning as settlement rails rather than just trading collateral.
Tokenization broadens capital-market access
Binance Research also connects financial inclusion to investment access.
According to the report, around 630 million adults hold an online brokerage account, while access to U.S. markets is materially lower despite the U.S. equity market representing roughly half of global market capitalization.
Tokenized equities and other real-world asset products could reduce that mismatch by enabling fractional ownership, extended trading hours, and access through crypto-native venues. Binance Research says seven-day rolling trading volume in TradFi perpetuals has grown 16x in 2026, while tokenization market value has expanded by around 180% over the past year.
The argument is not that tokenized assets replace the full structure of regulated securities markets. Rather, they may offer an additional access layer for users outside jurisdictions where the largest investable assets are listed or easily available through domestic brokers.
Private markets remain a major access gap
The report also points to private markets as a widening divide between institutional and retail investors.
Binance Research cites data showing that 87% of U.S. firms with more than $100 million in revenue are privately held. It also notes that companies are staying private for longer, with the median age at IPO rising from 8 years to 14 years across 2024 and 2025.
This matters because much of the value creation in high-growth companies now happens before public listing. Retail investors often gain access only after major valuation increases have already occurred.
Tokenized private credit, private equity, pre-IPO instruments, and perpetual contracts may offer one route to broader access, although these products remain subject to jurisdictional rules, liquidity constraints, and investor-protection requirements. Binance Research estimates that tokenized private credit and private equity currently total around $2.7 billion on-chain, still small relative to the broader private-market universe but directionally important.
Emerging markets drive multi-product usage
The report’s internal Binance data reinforces the broader inclusion thesis.
Binance Research says the share of Binance users from emerging markets has increased from 49% in 2020 to 77% in 2026. It also found that users engaging with two or more products account for 24% of total active users, while users engaging with three or more products account for 14%. Of this multi-product cohort, 83% are based in emerging markets.
Stablecoin behavior tells a similar story. Approximately 28% of users with portfolio balances of at least $10 hold at least half of their portfolio in stablecoins, up from 4% in 2020. In emerging markets, that share rises to 36%, while 73% of stablecoin savers globally are based in emerging markets.
This suggests that many users are not treating crypto platforms only as speculative venues. They are also using them for savings, dollar exposure, payments, and broader financial management.
On-chain finance moves beyond human users
The report also introduces a newer category: AI agents as economic participants.
Binance Research argues that AI agents require programmable money, permissionless identity, and composable settlement. It says more than 17,000 agents have been launched since 2025, around 19% of on-chain activity is automated or agentic, and 76% of stablecoin transfer volume is bot-driven.
This remains an early and complex area, but it adds another layer to the infrastructure argument. If autonomous software agents begin transacting at scale, low-cost programmable settlement could become more important than traditional card or banking rails designed for human-initiated payments.
The bigger question is regulation and resilience
The report’s conclusion is not that crypto has already solved financial inclusion. It is that on-chain infrastructure now deserves to be part of the financial-inclusion conversation.
That distinction matters. Stablecoins, tokenized assets, and crypto-based savings products still face regulatory, operational, custody, liquidity, and consumer-protection risks. Binance Research also notes that the future path will depend on regulatory clarity, the resilience of stablecoin and tokenized-asset infrastructure, and whether traditional providers adapt to the lower-cost model demonstrated by on-chain rails.
For the financial industry, the message is direct: crypto adoption in emerging markets is not only about market cycles. It is increasingly linked to real gaps in payments, savings, yield, credit, and investment access.
If those gaps remain unresolved by traditional institutions, on-chain finance may continue to grow not as an alternative investment niche, but as a parallel layer of global financial infrastructure.
Source: Binance Research, “Finance Without Frontiers.”
