Cboe BZX Exchange¶
Cboe BZX Exchange is a U.S. national securities exchange operated by Cboe Global Markets that runs three fully electronic venues: BZX Equities, BZX Options, and BZX Digital Assets. It originated as BATS Exchange in 2008 and was rebranded following Cboe's acquisition of BATS Global Markets in 2017. BZX Equities consistently ranks among the top five U.S. stock exchanges by volume, capturing roughly 8–12% of consolidated tape activity on a typical session.
HOW IT WORKS¶
BZX Equities operates a continuous, price-time priority limit order book in which orders at the same price execute in arrival sequence. The exchange supports standard order types—market, limit, IOC, FOK, and pegged—alongside a retail price improvement program where market makers compete to beat the NBBO by at least one mill. BZX Options uses a maker-taker fee model, paying rebates to liquidity providers and charging fees to takers, across options on more than 2,000 underlying securities. BZX Digital Assets, launched in September 2025, offers spot BTC and ETH trading with USD and USDC settlement under a New York limited-purpose trust charter and a BitLicense from the NYDFS. All three venues are purely electronic; there is no trading floor.
IN TAPEBOARD¶
In the Tapeboard terminal, BZX appears as an exchange identifier on Level 2 quotes and time-and-sales data, allowing traders to see how much displayed liquidity sits on BZX relative to other venues at a given price level. Tapeboard's smart order flow view flags when a disproportionate share of tape prints are routing to or away from BZX, which can indicate institutional order activity or fee-driven routing shifts. For options traders, BZX Options quote data surfaces inside Tapeboard's multi-leg order analyzer when comparing net execution cost across venues.