Report on the Current Development of Stock Perpetual Contract Market (July 2026)

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

Since 2026, stock perpetual contracts have rapidly become a new battleground for competition among cryptocurrency exchanges. The logic behind this is not complicated: when the narrative around native crypto assets is lacking and the trading volume 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 thus been packaged into perpetual contracts that can be settled in stablecoins, support leverage, and allow for 24/7 trading.

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

I. Overview

Since 2025, the 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 coin issuances declines, user trading frequency typically decreases.

According to industry data, the average monthly trading volume of the top 11 centralized perpetual exchanges fell to $4.7 trillion in 2026, down from $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. These products combine the stock assets of traditional financial markets (TradFi) with the flexible mechanisms of crypto perpetual contracts—no expiration date, 24/7 trading, high leverage, and USDT settlement—providing crypto-native users with a convenient channel to gain exposure to stock prices without needing to open a securities account.

Specifically, stock perpetual contracts provide exchanges with three new demands:

• Bringing traditional market hotspots such as US stock earnings reports, AI, semiconductors, and IPOs into crypto accounts;
• Allowing users to trade directly using USDT or USDC without needing to convert fiat currency or open a securities account;
• Increasing turnover through leverage, short selling, and 24/7 trading.

Therefore, stock perpetual contracts are not a simple substitute for traditional securities accounts, but rather a horizontal reuse of existing perpetual contract infrastructure by exchanges: matching, margin, liquidation, funding rates, copy trading, and market-making systems can all continue to be used, with the platform mainly adding external price indices, company action handling, 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 considers comprehensive trading volume, open interest, price spreads, fee rates, and funding rates, Binance, MEXC, and Bybit rank in the top three.

The rankings show that most exchanges have launched over 100 contracts, with BitMart, BingX, and Gate leading the way, each exceeding 250 contracts. However, a high number does not necessarily mean high liquidity; most of these platforms' stock perpetual contract trading pairs 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 have price spreads exceeding 0.2% as of the statistical cutoff time, which can severely damage 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, an immature market-making system, and an imperfect arbitrage mechanism, leading to price deviations and high trading costs.

In terms of trading volume, Binance, Hyperliquid, and OKX rank in the top three, 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.

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

Overall, the competitive landscape of the stock perpetual contract market is rapidly differentiating, with exchanges at different levels forming clear strategic divides, potentially rewriting the existing exchange landscape.

II. Major Market Trends

1. Explosive Growth in Trading Volume

The trading volume of stock perpetual contracts is showing 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 12 times that of the previous year.
• The monthly trading volume of tokenized stocks across 13 major exchanges globally increased from $831 million in July 2025 to $34 billion in May 2026, expanding approximately 40 times.

Taking Binance as an example, as of July 21 at 15:00 (UTC+8), the trading volume of several stock perpetual contract markets such as SNDK, MU, and SKHY exceeded $1 billion in the past 24 hours, second only to BTC and ETH, and significantly higher than assets like SOL, ZEC, and HYPE.

Meanwhile, the stock perpetual contract market has become an important source of trading volume, accounting for over 10% in most exchanges. During special market conditions, the short-term share of some exchanges' TradFi markets can reach around 30%.

Statistical Time: July 21, 15:00

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

2. Market Expansion from US Stocks to Asian Stocks

Initially, the stock perpetual contracts launched by cryptocurrency exchanges were primarily focused on US-listed companies such as Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Coinbase, and Strategy, with severe product homogeneity and trading times concentrated around US stock market hours.

However, starting in the second quarter of 2026, leading exchanges have systematically shifted towards the Asian market, now covering major stocks and ETFs in South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong on a large scale, marking the upgrade of this market from "US 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 in July includes contracts related to Asian stocks such as Tencent, Xiaomi, Meituan, NetEase, SMIC, Sony, Tokyo Electron, and SK Hynix.
• Binance's TradFi products now cover US tech stocks, semiconductor companies like TSMC, as well as ETFs in the Japanese and Korean markets.

This means that stock perpetual contracts are no longer just a "crypto version of US stock trading," but are forming a 24/7 derivatives network that uses stablecoins as the settlement layer and covers major global stock markets. Asian traders can hedge or speculate on local leading stocks through stablecoins on crypto exchanges during their local stock market's off-hours without bearing exchange rate risks (as contracts are priced in USDT).

At the same time, arbitrage opportunities between different markets are beginning to emerge—for example, the basis between SK Hynix's closing price on the Korean KOSPI and the Binance contract price can reach 3-5% during certain periods, attracting quantitative teams to enter the market. 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.

III. Risks and Challenges

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

First is the fragility of price discovery and arbitrage mechanisms. Since the underlying assets of stock perpetual contracts are traded 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), the contract prices lack effective anchoring mechanisms.

Data from Tiger Research shows that in June 2026, the average price of Binance's Samsung Electronics perpetual contract was 0.93% higher than that of Hyperliquid, and the price spread for SK Hynix contracts even reached 1.03%, peaking at 2.3% in extreme cases. This cross-exchange price spread further widens during periods when the spot market is closed, placing high real-time monitoring demands on arbitrage funds.

Secondly, liquidity differentiation and the immaturity of the market-making system are issues. While leading platforms like Binance, Hyperliquid, and OKX can achieve daily trading volumes exceeding $1 billion, many second- and third-tier platforms have severely insufficient depth in their stock perpetual contract markets.

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

Some exchanges with high price spreads

Thirdly, the ambiguity of compliance boundaries is a concern. Stock perpetual contracts exist in a gray area in terms of regulation. On one hand, these products do not involve the actual delivery of stocks and theoretically fall under the category of 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 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 category platforms, but specific implementation details remain unclear. For exchanges, finding a balance between innovative expansion and compliance risks will be a long-term test.

IV. Case Studies

1. Binance

Binance is one of the first mainstream exchanges to lay out TradFi perpetual contracts. As of July 20, 2026, Binance supports 130 stocks and TradFi-related perpetual contracts, with an open interest of approximately $2.326 billion and a 24-hour trading volume of about $16.392 billion, achieving a comprehensive score of 91.6, ranking first on the RootData list.

Binance's core competitiveness lies in its mature "multi-assets mode." This mode allows users to use crypto assets like BTC and ETH as margin to trade stock perpetual contracts, 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 pace of nearly one batch per week: on May 15, it launched contracts for US stocks such as Lumentum, Oracle, Disney, Uber, Cisco, and Home Depot; on June 2, it launched Korean stock perpetual contracts for Samsung, SK Hynix, and Hyundai; and on July 10, it added targets like GE Vernova, Vertiv, Snowflake, and Applovin.

This high-frequency new product strategy, combined with its existing crypto derivatives market-making system, enables Binance to quickly form a deep order book in the stock perpetual contract market.

2. Hyperliquid

Hyperliquid, as a leading decentralized trading platform, is one of the core players in the stock perpetual contract space, consistently ranking in the top five of the RootData stock perpetual contract exchange list and being the only DEX platform in the industry's top 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 differentiating advantages are concentrated in its technical architecture and trading mechanisms. The platform relies on a purely decentralized order book and a self-developed high-performance clearing engine to achieve 24/7 uninterrupted trading of stock perpetual contracts, with no custodial fund risks and anonymous trading, which highly aligns with the trading preferences of crypto-native users.

Additionally, the core team of the platform has a background in traditional high-frequency trading institutions, having built a mature pricing and risk control system, employing the EMA index moving average algorithm to optimize pricing during non-trading hours, effectively narrowing cross-platform price spreads. As of June 2026, its pricing stability for contracts related to Korean tech stocks like SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics is superior to that of most small and medium-sized trading platforms, with price spreads during spot market closures controlled within 0.3%, far below the industry average.

In terms of product layout, Hyperliquid focuses on scarce differentiated targets, being the first to launch perpetual contracts for pre-IPO companies, filling a gap in the industry. In May 2026, the platform launched a perpetual contract for SpaceX's pre-IPO, with a reference price of $150, corresponding to an implied valuation of over $1.78 trillion for the company, achieving over $100 million in trading volume within 24 hours of launch; in July, it launched a pre-IPO perpetual contract for Changxin Technology, becoming one of the first crypto platforms to lay out derivatives for unlisted tech companies in China, accurately capturing the heat and arbitrage demand of the primary market, forming a core product barrier distinct from traditional exchanges.

V. Conclusion

The rise of stock perpetual contracts is essentially a critical strategic breakthrough for cryptocurrency exchanges after the narrative around native assets has exhausted and trading increments have peaked. It is also a symbolic product of the deep integration of the crypto industry with traditional financial markets. This round of explosive growth in the sector is not merely a simple expansion of product lines, but a profound reconstruction of the business model and development logic of crypto exchanges, marking the industry's formal farewell to a single development model that solely relies on native crypto assets and fully embarking on the evolution towards a global multi-asset comprehensive trading platform.

From a market performance perspective, stock perpetual contracts, with advantages such as 24/7 trading, stablecoin settlement, no threshold asset allocation, and flexible leveraged trading, rapidly capture traditional financial market hotspots, achieving exponential growth in trading volume and becoming the most core incremental track in the crypto industry. The market landscape has evolved from early competition based on the number of targets to a comprehensive strength competition involving pricing ability, liquidity depth, cross-market risk control, global product layout, and compliance systems, with leading platforms continuously solidifying their barriers while smaller platforms focus on niche tracks, resulting in a fully formed layered competitive landscape in the industry.

In the long run, as diverse targets such as US stocks, mature Asian stock markets, and pre-IPO primary markets continue to expand, the boundaries between traditional finance and the crypto market will continue to dissolve. However, structural issues such as pricing mechanism defects, liquidity differentiation, and ambiguous global compliance will still long-term constrain the standardized development of the industry. In the future, platforms that can balance product innovation, trading experience, and compliance risk control while building a global multi-asset trading system will continue to seize industry incremental dividends and reshape the existing competitive landscape of the global crypto trading market.

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