Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

Since 2026, stock perpetual contracts have rapidly become a new battleground for crypto exchange competition. The logic behind this is straightforward: when crypto-native assets lack new narratives and altcoin trading activity declines, exchanges need to introduce new sources of volatility and tradable assets to maintain user trading frequency and fee revenue. Consequently, stocks, indices, commodities, forex, and even private company valuations are being packaged into perpetual contracts that settle in stablecoins, support leverage, and enable round-the-clock trading.

From a deeper strategic perspective, this expansion signals the transformation of crypto trading platforms from single crypto-asset exchanges into multi-asset trading platforms.

I. Overall Overview

Since 2025, the overall cryptocurrency market has shown a trend of declining trading activity. When Bitcoin enters a relatively stable period, the wealth effect of altcoins weakens, and the quality of new token listings drops, user trading frequency typically follows suit.

According to industry data, the average monthly trading volume of the top 11 centralized perpetual exchanges fell to $4.7 trillion in 2026, compared to $7.1 trillion in 2025. Against the backdrop of sluggish crypto asset trading, major exchanges urgently need to find new growth drivers to stimulate user trading appetite and boost platform revenue.

Stock perpetual contracts emerged as a key breakthrough against this backdrop. These products combine traditional financial (TradFi) stock assets with the flexible mechanisms of crypto perpetual contracts—no expiration, 24/7 trading, high leverage, and USDT settlement—providing crypto-native users with a convenient channel to gain stock price exposure without needing a securities account.

Specifically, stock perpetual contracts offer exchanges three new sources of demand:

• Importing traditional market hot spots like US stock earnings, AI, semiconductors, and IPOs into crypto accounts;

• Allowing users to trade directly with USDT and USDC without exchanging fiat currency or opening a securities account;

• Boosting turnover rates through leverage, short selling, and round-the-clock trading.

Thus, stock perpetual contracts are not simple substitutes for traditional securities accounts; instead, they represent a horizontal reuse of exchanges' existing perpetual contract infrastructure: matching engines, margin systems, liquidation mechanisms, funding rates, copy trading, and market-making systems can all be reused. The main additions by platforms are external price feeds, corporate action handling, and risk control capabilities.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes predicts that by the end of 2026, all major centralized and decentralized exchanges will offer stock perpetual contract trading.

According to RootData’s stock perpetual contract exchange ranking as of July 21, nearly 30 crypto trading platforms have launched stock perpetual contract markets. Based on a formula factoring in total trading volume, open interest, spreads, fee rates, and funding rates, Binance, MEXC, and Bybit rank in the top three on this list.

The ranking shows that most exchanges list over 100 contracts. BitMart, BingX, and Gate lead with over 250 contracts each. However, more contracts do not necessarily mean higher liquidity; most of these platforms' stock perpetual contract trading pairs suffer from low trading volume and poor depth, placing them in the bottom half of the ranking.

More specifically, exchanges like MEXC, BingX, KuCoin, Phemex, BitMart, HTX, and MSX had spreads exceeding 0.2% at the time of the snapshot, severely impacting the experience and actual interests of large-scale users. This highlights persistent weaknesses in the crypto market's microstructure, such as insufficient liquidity, immature market-making systems, and imperfect arbitrage mechanisms, leading to price deviations and high transaction costs.

In terms of trading volume, Binance, Hyperliquid, and OKX rank in the top three, with daily trading volumes exceeding $3 billion. Legacy exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, HTX, Crypto.com, and BitMEX lag significantly, with daily volumes below $50 million.

Additionally, second- and third-tier exchanges like XT.COM and Bitunix have been quite active in the stock perpetual contract market, not only ranking high in core metrics like volume and open interest but also placing in the top ten overall.

Overall, the competitive landscape of the stock perpetual contract market is rapidly diverging, with exchanges at different tiers forming clear strategic distinctions, potentially even reshaping the existing exchange hierarchy.

II. Key Market Trends

1. Explosive Growth in Trading Volume

Trading volume for stock perpetual contracts is growing exponentially. According to CoinGecko's "TradFi on Crypto Exchanges Report 2026":

• Full-year 2025: TradFi perpetual contracts traded $104.21 billion

• First five months of 2026: This figure has already surpassed $1.32 trillion, over 12 times the total for the entire previous year

• Monthly trading volume of tokenized stocks across 13 major global exchanges surged from $831 million in July 2025 to $34 billion in May 2026, an approximate 40-fold increase

Taking Binance as an example, as of 15:00 (UTC+8) on July 21, several stock perpetual contract markets, including SNDK, MU, and SKHY, recorded nearly 24-hour trading volumes exceeding $1 billion, trailing only the crypto assets BTC and ETH, and significantly outpacing assets like SOL, ZEC, and HYPE.

Meanwhile, stock perpetual contract markets have become a significant source of trading volume for most exchanges, accounting for over 10% of their total. During specific market events, the share of TradFi markets on some exchanges can briefly reach around 30%.

Snapshot time: 15:00, July 21

Despite this stunning growth, tokenized stock trading volume still represents less than 1% of the total traditional stock market. This stark contrast precisely indicates that this market is still in its early stages, with immense potential for future growth.

2. Market Expansion from US Stocks to Asian Stocks

Initially, stock perpetual contracts listed on crypto exchanges were primarily concentrated on US-listed companies like Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Coinbase, and Strategy, leading to significant product homogeneity and trading activity largely concentrated during US market hours.

However, starting from the second quarter of 2026, leading exchanges systematically pivoted towards Asian markets, now covering major stocks and ETFs from South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong on a large scale. This marks an upgrade from "US stock derivatives" to "global stock derivatives."

Examples include:

• OKX launched perpetual contracts for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Hyundai in June 2026, with SKHYNIX/USDT settled in USDT.

• Bitget's updated TradFi product list in July includes contracts related to Asian stocks like Tencent, Xiaomi, Meituan, NetEase, SMIC, Sony, Tokyo Electron, and SK Hynix.

• Binance's TradFi offerings now cover US tech stocks, semiconductor companies like TSMC, and ETFs tracking Japanese and South Korean markets.

This means stock perpetuals are no longer just a "crypto version of US stock trading"; they are forming a 24/7 derivatives network using stablecoins as the settlement layer, covering major global stock markets. Asian traders can use stablecoins on crypto exchanges to hedge or speculate on local blue-chip stocks during the closing hours of their local markets, without bearing currency risk (as contracts are denominated in USDT).

Furthermore, arbitrage opportunities across different markets are emerging. For example, the basis between SK Hynix's closing price on the Korea KOSPI and its price on Binance futures can reach 3-5% during certain periods, attracting quantitative teams. This trend is expected to continue, potentially expanding to European, Southeast Asian, and Latin American markets, ultimately forming a true global stock perpetual contract ecosystem.

III. Risks and Challenges

Despite rapid growth, the stock perpetual contract market faces several structural challenges.

First is the vulnerability of price discovery and arbitrage mechanisms. Since the underlying assets for stock perpetuals trade on traditional exchanges, while the contracts themselves trade 24/7 on crypto platforms, there is a lack of an effective anchoring mechanism for contract prices when the spot market is closed (especially overnight and on weekends).

Data from Tiger Research shows that in June 2026, Binance's Samsung Electronics perpetual contract price averaged 0.93% higher than on Hyperliquid, with the SK Hynix contract spread reaching as high as 1.03% and spiking to 2.3% in extreme cases. These cross-exchange spreads widen further during spot market closures, demanding highly sophisticated real-time monitoring from arbitrage funds.

Second is the divergence in liquidity and the immaturity of market-making systems. While top-tier platforms like Binance, Hyperliquid, and OKX see daily trading volumes exceeding $1 billion, many second- and third-tier platforms suffer from severely inadequate depth in their stock perpetual contract markets.

Spreads on platforms like MEXC, KuCoin, and Phemex typically exceed 0.2%, exposing large-scale users to significant transaction costs and slippage risk. Market makers have a mature ecosystem in traditional stock markets, but their incentives and risk management tools remain underdeveloped for crypto stock perpetuals.

Some exchanges with high spreads

Third is the ambiguity of regulatory boundaries. Stock perpetual contracts exist in a regulatory gray zone. On one hand, these products do not involve the actual delivery of stocks, theoretically falling under the category of derivatives. On the other hand, they track strictly regulated traditional stock assets and offer leveraged trading to global users (including retail investors outside the US market).

In March 2026, the SEC and CFTC signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the regulation of "Super Apps," laying the groundwork for a unified compliance framework for cross-asset platforms. However, specific implementation details remain unclear. Balancing innovation and expansion with compliance risk will be a long-term challenge for exchanges.

IV. Case Studies

1. Binance

Binance was one of the first major exchanges to enter the TradFi perpetual contract space. As of July 20, 2026, Binance supported 130 stock and TradFi-related perpetual contracts, with open interest of approximately $2.326 billion, a 24-hour trading volume of about $16.392 billion, and a comprehensive score of 91.6, ranking first on the RootData list.

Binance's core competitive advantage lies in its mature "Multi-Assets Mode," which allows users to use crypto assets like BTC and ETH as margin for trading stock perpetuals, enabling seamless switching between crypto and traditional financial assets within a single account system.

Since Q2 2026, Binance has been listing new TradFi perpetual contracts at a near-weekly pace: On May 15, it launched contracts for Lumentum, Oracle, Disney, Uber, Cisco, Home Depot, and other US stocks; on June 2, it listed South Korean stocks like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Hyundai; on July 10, it added GE Vernova, Vertiv, Snowflake, Applovin, and others.

This high-frequency listing strategy, combined with its existing crypto derivatives market-making systems, allows Binance to quickly build deep order books in the stock perpetual market.

2. Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid, a leading decentralized exchange (DEX), is a core player in the stock perpetual contract space, consistently ranking in the top five on RootData's list and being the only DEX in the industry's top tier. As of July 2026, Hyperliquid's daily stock perpetual contract volume steadily exceeds $1 billion, with TradFi asset volume accounting for 30% of the platform's total volume, making it a key revenue driver.

Compared to centralized exchanges, Hyperliquid's core differentiation lies in its technical architecture and trading mechanisms. Leveraging a pure decentralized order book and a proprietary high-performance clearing engine, the platform offers core features for stock perpetuals: 24/7 uninterrupted trading, no custodial risk, and anonymous trading, strongly aligning with crypto-native user preferences.

Furthermore, Hyperliquid's core team has backgrounds in traditional high-frequency trading firms. They have built sophisticated pricing and risk control systems, including using an EMA (Exponential Moving Average) algorithm to optimize pricing during non-trading hours, effectively narrowing cross-platform spreads. For contracts on Asian tech stocks like SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics, Hyperliquid demonstrates greater pricing stability than most smaller and mid-tier platforms. Data from June 2026 shows its Korean tech stock contract spreads during spot market closures were controlled within 0.3%, well below the industry average.

In terms of product strategy, Hyperliquid focuses on scarce, differentiated assets, being the first to list perpetual contracts for pre-IPO companies in the primary market, filling a gap in the industry. In May 2026, the platform launched a SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contract with a reference price of $150 (implying a valuation over $1.78 trillion), achieving a 24-hour trading volume exceeding $100 million. In July, it launched a perpetual contract for ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a Chinese unlisted tech company, becoming one of the first crypto platforms to offer derivatives on Chinese unlisted tech ventures. This precisely captures primary market interest and arbitrage demand, creating a core product barrier that distinguishes it from traditional exchanges.

V. Summary

The rise of stock perpetual contracts is fundamentally a critical strategic breakthrough for crypto exchanges facing narrative exhaustion and slowing native asset growth, and a landmark product of deep integration between the crypto industry and traditional financial markets. This sector explosion is not merely a product line expansion; it represents a deep restructuring of crypto exchanges' business models and developmental logic, signaling the industry's official departure from relying solely on crypto-native assets towards evolving into globalized, multi-asset comprehensive trading platforms.

From a market performance perspective, by leveraging advantages like round-the-clock trading, stablecoin settlement, barrier-free asset allocation, and flexible leveraged trading, stock perpetual contracts have rapidly captured hot flows from traditional financial markets, achieving exponential volume growth and becoming the core incremental sector for the crypto industry. The competitive landscape has evolved from an initial focus on the number of listed assets to a comprehensive contest of pricing capabilities, liquidity depth, cross-market risk control, global product coverage, and compliance frameworks. Barriers for leading platforms are solidifying, while smaller platforms focus on niche segments, creating a clearly stratified competitive structure.

Looking ahead, as the range of assets continues to expand to include US stocks, mature Asian markets, and pre-IPO primary market opportunities, the boundaries between traditional finance and the crypto market will continue to blur. However, structural issues like flaws in pricing mechanisms, liquidity polarization, and global regulatory ambiguity will persist as long-term constraints on the industry's standardized development. Ultimately, platforms that can balance product innovation, trading experience, and compliance risk control while building a global, multi-asset trading system will be best positioned to capture incremental industry growth and reshape the existing competitive dynamics of the global crypto trading market.