Former FTX US President Brett Harrison is launching a new business that will introduce one of the most popular and controversial trading tools in cryptocurrency—perpetual contracts—into the traditional financial sector.
According to Bloomberg on Wednesday, his startup Architect Financial Technologies has received approval from Bermuda to offer perpetual futures contracts linked to traditional assets such as stocks, indices, commodities, foreign exchange, and interest rates.
Perpetual futures, also known as "perpetual contracts," allow traders to establish leveraged long or short positions without a contract expiration date. To keep prices aligned with the spot market, exchanges use a funding rate mechanism, which is a periodic payment between long and short positions to balance demand.
Perpetual contracts were initially promoted by BitMEX and later popularized by FTX, helping to drive explosive growth in cryptocurrency—monthly trading volume surged from $35 billion in 2018 to $6.4 trillion in 2025.
While FTX Global offered cryptocurrency perpetual contracts with leverage up to 100 times, FTX US, where Harrison served as president, operated as a separate regulated entity and did not provide such products.
Nevertheless, both exchanges collapsed in November 2022 due to a severe liquidity crisis that exposed a massive funding gap, ultimately leading to FTX's bankruptcy filing.
Despite their success, perpetual contracts are considered high-risk derivatives, drawing scrutiny from analysts and regulators. Coincall executive Fenni Kang warned in May that for inexperienced traders, "perpetual contracts can be a ticking time bomb."
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Kang cautioned that many traders overuse margin, meaning even slight market fluctuations can trigger devastating liquidations.
Perpetual futures have also attracted regulatory scrutiny. In 2023, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) warned that safeguards and settlement practices were insufficient.
Nonetheless, perpetual contracts remain a cornerstone of cryptocurrency trading, dominated by platforms such as Binance, OKX, Bybit, and Bitget.
Related: Prediction platform Polymarket plans to relaunch in the U.S. market by the end of November.
Original article: “Former FTX US President's New Startup Brings Perpetual Contracts to Traditional Financial Markets”
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
