Arcus, the 24/7 Stock Token Exchange | Real Fee Numbers and Access from Japan

Arcus is an exchange where you can trade stock tokens — tokens that track the price of US stocks and ETFs — 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with no trading fee. You don't need a brokerage account; a wallet is enough.

As measured on September 3, 2026, spot stock tokens had drawn roughly $200 million in volume and more than 510,000 fills over 30 days, so real demand for a place to trade stocks is starting to take hold. The other headline product, perpetual futures, tells a different story: over 80% of its volume is crypto, and stock futures account for just under 10%.

Arcus was launched by dYdX Labs, with Robinhood Crypto joining as a strategic investor.

It is an exchange that handles both spot trading of stock tokens and perpetual futures from a single self-custody wallet. Arcus has not issued a token of its own yet.

The main use case is as an alternative to buying US stocks through a Japanese brokerage account. No account opening and no identity verification are required, you can trade on weekends or late at night Japan time, and from that same account you can short the same names or trade them with leverage.

The company behind it is dYdX Labs, whose CEO is Eddie Zhang, a former product manager at Meta. He joined when Pocket Protector, which he co-founded, was acquired by dYdX Labs.

Writing about dYdX v4 — the previous generation that pushed decentralization to its limit — the official dYdX blog says that "performance and user experience were sacrificed. The market responded clearly, and competitors that prioritized speed, simplicity, and liquidity took share." Arcus is the redesign that came out of that reckoning, built around performance and distribution.

The dYdX blog says Arcus was "built jointly by dYdX Labs and Robinhood Crypto," and the Arcus blog likewise describes it as "built in partnership with Robinhood." How the development work was divided, and how much was invested, have not been disclosed.

Image: screenshot of the official Arcus top page (captured September 3, 2026)

By the numbers, it is getting there. Spot volume runs about $16.3 million a day, and over 30 days it adds up to roughly $200 million across 516,000 fills.

There are 234 listings. Stock tokens, which make up most of them, have grown from 95 at launch to 179. A handful of index, commodity, and meme tokens round out the rest.

Orders are not filled on an order book that Arcus runs itself. There are two sources of liquidity — an on-chain automated market maker, and firm quotes from professional market makers — and each order is routed to whichever gives the better fill. Which of the two is primary and which is secondary is not specified officially.

The fee is 0%. The official wording, though, is "free at launch," which plainly leaves the door open to change. Nor does that mean your cost is zero: on spot, the real cost shows up in the quoted rate at execution and in the estimated slippage.

Image: screenshot of the Arcus app (Spot / TSLA) (captured September 3, 2026)

The activity itself is not skewed toward speculation on a single name either. 227 listings traded over the 30-day window, and the top 10 combined account for 33.2% of the total. By category, 89% is stocks — the numbers show that people are coming here for equities.

👉 See the listings and volume on Arcus

When you buy a stock token, what you get is not ownership of the share itself but a contractual claim against the issuer. Voting rights do not come with it.

The official documentation states explicitly that "stock tokens are issued by Bitstamp" and that "Arcus is the trading venue, not the issuer." The issuer, Bitstamp Global Ltd., is a British Virgin Islands company, and it holds its reserves with a regulated custodian. Those reserves consist of the underlying shares, which are replaced by cash or cash equivalents while they are out on loan.

No official document says "one-to-one," so the backing ratio cannot be stated that way. Redemption of a token, and any claim if the issuer fails, both run to Bitstamp — not to Arcus.

Dividends are not paid out in cash. The official help center explains that "the cash value of dividends is reinvested into the underlying asset backing the token, and the displayed balance is adjusted accordingly." It is not that dividends are absent — it is that you cannot receive them in cash.

Voting rights are explicitly described as "not passed through," so you cannot vote on shareholder resolutions.

64 perpetual futures markets are listed, and 58 of them actually trade. But 84.7% of the volume is in crypto names, while stock futures — supposedly the headline — account for only 7.9%.

Daily volume of about $67.8 million is larger than spot, yet the single BTC-USD market makes up 63.1% of the total. There are 34 stock futures markets, and their combined 24-hour volume is about $5.35 million. If you come here to short stocks or trade them with leverage, you may run into a thinner book than you expected.

Maximum leverage varies by market, and most are 10x or below. The only market where you can use 50x is SPY, the S&P 500 ETF.

While the underlying market is closed, the trading conditions change too. In 42 of the 64 markets, initial margin is raised by a factor of 1.5 during off-hours, so in a 10x market you can effectively only build to about 7x. The funding rate also switches from market-driven to a fixed rate (SOFR + 0.5%).

Prices are confined to a band centered on the previous session's close. The band widens by one step when pressure on one side persists for an hour. Even if the price comes back, the band does not narrow again during that session.

Image: from the official Arcus documentation (retrieved September 3, 2026)

So while it is "open 24 hours," building a position during off-hours is harder.

In volume and open interest, it is also an order of magnitude away from dedicated perpetual futures venues. To keep the definitions consistent, here is the comparison using CoinGecko's derivatives exchange data (September 3, 2026).

The gap to Hyperliquid is more than 100x in volume, and more than 15x even against Lighter. On pair count alone it is level with Ondo Perps, which is itself a competitor in stock-linked futures. In spot stock tokens, xStocks, the tokenized equities platform, is ahead, but there is no public data that lets you compare the depth of the two books on the same definition.

In short, today's Arcus is an exchange where spot equities are starting to grow, not yet a place where you move equities with leverage. pTokens, added in August 2026 (a mechanism that lets you hold a perpetual futures account as an ERC-20 token), hold about $390,000 in assets across all five as of September 3, 2026.

What's more, current volume is propped up by time-limited rates — half-price for takers, free for makers — and by a design in which your volume feeds into your waitlist ranking. There is no data yet showing whether the same levels hold once standard rates return. Real demand is starting to attach to spot, while as a futures venue it is still thin: that is Arcus today.

Perpetual futures fees are currently at a beta-only half rate. Access from Japan is not blocked, but that is not a guarantee of legality.

Perpetual Futures Fees Are Beta-Only Half Rates

The taker fee on perpetual futures is 0.0225%. That is a beta-only half rate, though; the standard rate is 0.045%. For makers, the bottom five tiers are free during the beta.

Fee tiers are split into seven levels based on trailing 30-day volume, but the bottom tier runs all the way up to $5 million over 30 days. Most people will end up using the service in that bottom tier.

There Are Three Reward Programs Right Now, All Run by Arcus Itself

In every case Arcus is the one distributing, so none of these are airdrops of a third party's token.

The official documentation notes that the referral rate shown is a figure before rebates, rounding, and caps are applied. There is no guarantee you receive it as displayed. There is no points program at all; the rewards screen in the app has just two tabs — your own trading activity and referrals.

You Can Access It from Japan, but That Is Not a Guarantee of Legality

Calling the geolocation API that the official app relies on from Tokyo returns a response saying that neither spot nor perpetual futures is restricted for Japan (as of September 3, 2026).

Article 8 of the terms of service names the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada as restricted; Japan is not on the list. The same clause also states that it is the user's responsibility to determine whether use is lawful in their own jurisdiction.

Arcus is not a registered operator in Japan. The app not blocking you and the service being lawful in Japan are two different things.

Your Claim on the Asset Is Not Against Arcus

The claim behind a stock token runs to the issuer, Bitstamp, not to Arcus. There is no segregated-asset regime or investor protection fund of the kind that applies to a Japanese brokerage.

If something happens to the issuer, how the tokens you hold are treated is decided under a framework separate from that of a brokerage account. The tax treatment is also less settled than it is for a domestic brokerage account.

There Is No Isolated Margin, and USDG Is the Only Collateral

Perpetual futures margin is cross margin only. The official documentation says it is "cross margin at launch, with isolated margin planned."

The mainnet changelog dated August 27, 2026 also states explicitly that "per-account isolated margin is not enabled in production." The field exists in the API but does not work, so a loss on one name reaches your whole account.

Collateral is likewise limited to USDG, issued by Paxos; using BTC or ETH as margin is still only planned.

The Current Terms Are Time-Limited

When the beta fee discount ends, the burden on the taker side goes back to twice the current level. Margin gets heavier during off-hours, and there are stretches when the price band keeps limit orders from filling.

Arcus itself notes site-wide that "you may lose money, particularly when using leverage" and that nothing on the site is investment advice.

Spot has no waitlist, so if you are in a supported region you can try it today.

1. Check that your region is supported. You cannot use it from the US, the UK, or Canada. As of September 3, 2026 the app does not block access from Japan, but judging whether that is lawful is your own responsibility.
2. Connect your wallet at the official Arcus site. You can also create an account with email or a social login.
3. Deposit. You can fund from crypto on other chains, an exchange balance, Apple Pay, or a card, and it converts to USDG automatically. Arcus does not charge a deposit fee.
4. Pick a listing on the Discover screen. "24h Arcus Vol." is the volume on Arcus, while "24h Total Vol." next to it is the volume of the entire underlying market. Don't mix the two up.
5. Make one small spot purchase. Before you sign, always check the quoted rate and the estimated slippage setting.
6. If you want to use perpetual futures, sign up on the waitlist page by connecting your X account and wallet. Your rank is set by three things: your past futures volume on other exchanges, your spot volume on Arcus, and referrals. If you don't activate within a week of being accepted, your spot goes to the next person.

Image: screenshot of the Arcus app (Perps) (captured September 3, 2026)

👉 Check supported regions and current fee terms on the official Arcus site

As of September 3, 2026, spot stock tokens on Arcus have accumulated more than 500,000 fills over 30 days. Real demand for it as a trading venue is taking hold. Perpetual futures, meanwhile, are still centered on crypto names; the headline stock futures are thin, and fees remain at beta-only levels.

Volume by category is available to anyone through the official API, so watching whether the equity share rises after standard rates return will give you more to judge by.

Sources

1. dYdX official blog (2026)
2. Arcus official documentation — spot stock token overview (2026)
3. Arcus official documentation — RWA perpetual futures (2026)
4. Arcus official documentation — margin (2026)
5. Arcus official documentation — deposits and collateral (2026)
6. Arcus official documentation — changelog (2026)
7. Arcus Terms of Service (2026)
8. Arcus official blog — how the waitlist works (2026)
9. Arcus official API — market list (2026)
10. Arcus official API — fee tiers (2026)
11. Arcus official indexer — spot volume (2026)
12. CoinGecko — derivatives exchanges (2026)