Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

Since 2026, stock perpetual contracts have rapidly become a new battlefield for competition among cryptocurrency exchanges. The logic behind this is not complex: when the narrative around crypto native assets lacks freshness, and the activity level of altcoins declines, exchanges need to introduce new sources of volatility and tradable assets to maintain user trading frequency and fee income. Stocks, indices, commodities, foreign exchange, and even valuations of unlisted companies have been packaged into perpetual contracts that can be settled with stablecoins, support leverage, and allow for 24/7 trading.

From a broader strategic perspective, this round of expansion signals the transformation of cryptocurrency trading platforms from single cryptocurrency exchanges to multi-asset trading platforms.

1. Overall Overview

Since 2025, the cryptocurrency market has shown an overall trend of declining trading activity. When Bitcoin enters a relatively stable period, the wealth effect of altcoins diminishes, and the quality of new coin issuances declines, user trading frequency generally follows suit.

According to industry data, the average monthly trading volume of the top 11 centralized perpetual exchanges in 2026 dropped to $4.7 trillion, compared to $7.1 trillion in 2025. Against the backdrop of sluggish trading in crypto assets themselves, major exchanges urgently need to find new growth points to stimulate user trading desire and increase platform revenue.

Traditional stock perpetual contracts have emerged as a key breakthrough in this context. Such products combine traditional financial market (TradFi) stock assets with the flexible mechanisms of cryptocurrency perpetual contracts—no expiry date, 24/7 trading, high leverage, and USDT settlement—providing crypto native users with a convenient way to gain exposure to stock prices without opening a securities account.

Specifically, stock perpetual contracts provide exchanges with three new types of demand:

• Bringing traditional market hotspots such as U.S. stock earnings reports, AI, semiconductors, and IPOs into crypto accounts;

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

• Increasing turnover through leverage, short selling, and 24/7 trading.

Thus, stock perpetual contracts are not simply a substitute for traditional securities accounts, but rather a horizontal reuse of existing perpetual contract infrastructure by exchanges: matching, margin, forced liquidation, funding rates, copy trading, and market making systems can continue to be used, with platforms mainly increasing external price indices, corporate action processing, and risk control capabilities.

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

According to RootData's stock perpetual contract exchange rankings as of July 21, nearly 30 cryptocurrency trading platforms have launched stock perpetual contract markets. Based on a formula that takes into account comprehensive trading volume, open interest, spreads, fee rates, funding rates, and other factors, Binance, MEXC, and Bybit rank in the top three.

The rankings show that most exchanges have launched more than 100 contracts, with BitMart, BingX, and Gate taking the top three spots, each exceeding 250. However, a high number does not necessarily mean high liquidity, as most stock perpetual contract trading pairs on these platforms have very low trading volume and depth, ranking in the mid to lower tiers.

More specifically, exchanges such as MEXC, BingX, KuCoin, Phemex, BitMart, HTX, and MSX show spreads above 0.2% as of the reporting time, which can severely harm the user experience and actual benefits for large capital users. This reflects that the microstructure of the crypto market still has many shortcomings, such as insufficient liquidity, immature market-making systems, and imperfect arbitrage mechanisms, leading to price discrepancies and high transaction costs.

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

In addition, second and third tier exchanges like XT.COM and Bitunix appear quite active in the stock perpetual contract market, not only with core indicators like trading volume and open interest ranking high, but also placing in the top ten overall.

Overall, the competitive landscape of the stock perpetual contract market is rapidly differentiating, with exchanges of different tiers forming clear strategic distinctions, even having the opportunity to rewrite the existing exchange landscape.

2. Major Market Trends

1. Explosive Growth in Trading Volume

The trading volume of stock perpetual contracts is exhibiting exponential growth. According to the "TradFi on Crypto Exchanges Report 2026" released by CoinGecko:

• In 2025, the total trading volume of TradFi perpetual contracts reached $104.21 billion.

• In the first five months of 2026, this figure has surpassed $1.32 trillion, more than twelve times the entirety of last year.

• The monthly trading volume of tokenized stocks across 13 major global exchanges rose from $83.1 million in July 2025 to $34 billion in May 2026, expanding by about 40 times.

For example, as of July 21 at 3 PM (UTC+8), several stock perpetual contract markets such as SNDK, MU, and SKHY on Binance saw nearly 24 hours of trading volume exceeding $1 billion, second only to BTC and ETH, and significantly higher than assets like SOL, ZEC, and HYPE.

At the same time, equity perpetual contract markets have become an important source, exceeding 10% of total transaction volume on most exchanges. During special market conditions, the short-term proportion of TradFi markets on certain exchanges can reach around 30%.

Statistics Time: July 21 at 15:00

Even with such astonishing growth, the trading volume of tokenized stocks still accounts for less than 1% of the total volume in traditional stock markets. This significant gap indicates that the market is still in its early stages, with vast growth potential ahead.

2. Market Expansion from U.S. Stocks to Asian Stocks

The stock perpetual contracts launched by cryptocurrency exchanges were initially focused on U.S.-listed companies such as Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, and Coinbase, with severe product homogeneity, and trading time concentrated in the hours when U.S. stock markets were open.

However, starting in the second quarter of 2026, leading exchanges have systematically shifted towards the Asian market, now widely covering leading stocks and ETFs from South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong, marking the upgrade of this market from "U.S. stock derivatives" to "global stock derivatives."

For example:

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

• Bitget's updated TradFi product list includes Asian stock-related contracts such as Tencent, Xiaomi, Meituan, NetEase, SMIC, Sony, Tokyo Electron, and SK Hynix as of July.

• Binance's TradFi products cover U.S. tech stocks, TSMC and other semiconductor companies, along with ETFs in the Japanese and Korean markets.

This means that stock perpetual contracts are no longer just "crypto versions of U.S. stock trading," but are forming a 24/7 derivatives network covering major global stock markets with stablecoins as the settlement layer. Asian traders can hedge or speculate on local leading stocks on crypto exchanges during their domestic market's off-hours without bearing foreign exchange risk (contracts priced in USDT).

At the same time, price arbitrage opportunities between different markets are beginning to appear—for instance, the basis between the closing price of SK Hynix on the Korean KOSPI and Binance contract prices can reach 3-5% during certain periods, attracting quant teams to enter. This trend is expected to continue, potentially expanding to European, Southeast Asian, and Latin American markets, ultimately forming a truly global stock perpetual contract ecosystem.

3. Risks and Challenges

Despite the rapid growth of the stock perpetual contract market, its development still faces multiple structural challenges.

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

Data from Tiger Research indicates that in June 2026, the average price of Binance's Samsung Electronics perpetual contracts was 0.93% higher than Hyperliquid's, and the price difference for SK Hynix contracts even reached 1.03%, with extreme cases hitting 2.3%. Such inter-exchange price differences can further widen during the closure of the spot market, placing high real-time monitoring demands on arbitrage capital.

Secondly, the differentiation in liquidity and the immaturity of market-making systems. Although the daily trading volumes on leading platforms like Binance, Hyperliquid, and OKX can reach over $1 billion, many second and third-tier platforms have severe insufficient depth in their stock perpetual contract markets.

Platforms like MEXC, KuCoin, and Phemex generally have spreads exceeding 0.2%, indicating that users with large capital face significant transaction costs and slippage risks. Market makers have a mature ecosystem in traditional stock markets, but in the stock perpetual contract markets on crypto platforms, the participation motivation and risk management tools for market makers are still lacking.

Some high-spread exchanges

Thirdly, there is ambiguity in compliance boundaries. Stock perpetual contracts reside in a gray area from a regulatory standpoint. On one hand, these products do not involve the actual delivery of stocks and are theoretically categorized as derivatives; on the other hand, they track traditional stock assets that are subject to strict regulation and offer leveraged trading to global users (including retail investors outside the U.S. market).

In March 2026, the SEC and CFTC signed a memorandum of understanding regarding "Super App" regulation, laying the groundwork for a unified compliance framework for cross-asset category platforms, but specifics for implementation remain unclear. For exchanges, striking a balance between innovative expansion and compliance risks will be a long-term test.

4. Case Studies

1. Binance

Binance is one of the first platforms among mainstream exchanges to layout TradFi perpetual contracts. As of July 20, 2026, Binance supports 130 stocks and TradFi-related perpetual contracts, with a holding size 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 competitiveness lies in its mature "multi-asset mode." This model allows users to trade stock perpetual contracts using cryptocurrencies such as BTC and ETH as margin, achieving seamless switching between crypto assets and traditional financial assets within the same account system.

Since the second quarter of 2026, Binance has been intensively launching TradFi perpetual contracts at a weekly batch pace: major releases on May 15 included contracts for Lumentum, Oracle, Disney, Uber, Cisco, Home Depot, etc.; on June 2, it launched Korean stock perpetual contracts for Samsung, SK Hynix, Hyundai; and on July 10, new targets such as GE Vernova, Vertiv, Snowflake, and Applovin were added.

This high-frequency launch strategy, together with its existing crypto derivatives market-making system, has allowed Binance to rapidly establish a deep order book in the stock perpetual contract market.

2. Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid is a leading decentralized trading platform and a core player in the stock perpetual contract space, consistently ranking in the top five of RootData's stock perpetual contract exchange list, being the only DEX platform in the industry's first tier. As of July 2026, Hyperliquid's daily trading volume for stock perpetual contracts consistently exceeds $1 billion, with TradFi asset contract trading volume accounting for 30% of the platform's total trading volume, becoming its core revenue growth point.

Compared to centralized exchanges, Hyperliquid's core differentiated advantage focuses on technical architecture and trading mechanisms. The platform’s reliance on a purely decentralized order book and self-developed high-performance clearing engine enables 7x24 hour uninterrupted trading of stock perpetual contracts, no custodial fund risks, and anonymous trading, which highly aligns with the trading preferences of crypto-native users.

Moreover, the core team’s background in traditional high-frequency trading institutions has established a mature pricing and risk control system, employing the EMA index moving average algorithm to optimize pricing in non-trading hours, effectively narrowing inter-platform price differences, and demonstrating greater stability in pricing for contracts on Asian tech stocks like SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics compared to most mid-tier trading platforms. Data from June 2026 shows that its Korean tech stock contract spreads during the closure of spot market trading are controlled within 0.3%, far below the industry average.

In terms of product layout, Hyperliquid focuses on scarce differentiated targets and has taken the lead in the perpetual contracts market for Pre-IPO companies, filling gaps in the industry. In May 2026, the platform launched a SpaceX pre-IPO perpetual contract with a reference price of $150, corresponding to an implied corporate valuation exceeding $1.78 trillion, breaking $100 million in trading volume within 24 hours post-launch; in July, it rolled out domestic ChangXin Technology pre-IPO perpetual contracts, becoming one of the first crypto platforms to lay out derivatives for Chinese unlisted tech companies, accurately capturing the enthusiasm and arbitrage demand in the primary market to create core product barriers distinct from traditional exchanges.

5. Conclusion

The rise of stock perpetual contracts is essentially a key strategic breakthrough for cryptocurrency exchanges after the exhaustion of narratives around native assets and the peak of incremental trading, also marking a symbolic product of the deep integration of the crypto industry with traditional financial markets. This wave of track explosion is not merely a simple expansion of product lines but a deep reconstruction of the business model and development logic of cryptocurrency exchanges, signifying the industry's official departure from solely relying on crypto native assets as a single development model, fully embarking on an evolution towards a global multi-asset comprehensive trading platform transformation.

From a market performance perspective, stock perpetual contracts leverage advantages such as 24/7 trading, stablecoin settlement, no threshold asset allocation, and flexible leveraged trading to quickly capture traffic from traditional financial market hotspots, achieving exponential growth in trading scale and becoming the most core growth track in the crypto industry. The market landscape has evolved from early competition based on the number of assets to a comprehensive strength comparison involving pricing capability, liquidity depth, cross-market risk control, global product layout, and compliance systems, solidifying the barriers of leading platforms while mid-tier and small platforms focus on niche tracks, resulting in a complete formation of a layered competitive landscape in the industry.

In the long run, as diverse targets continue to expand in mature U.S. stock markets, Asian stock markets, and Pre-IPO primary markets, the boundaries between traditional finance and crypto markets will continue to blur. However, structural problems such as pricing mechanism defects, liquidity differentiation, and global compliance ambiguity will remain long-term constraints to the industry's normalized development. In the future, platforms that can effectively balance product innovation, trading experiences, and compliance risk control while building a global multi-asset trading system will continue to capture industry growth dividends, rewriting the existing competitive landscape of the global cryptocurrency trading market.

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