Perpetual contracts on stocks: the new frontier challenging the CME

Source: CritpoTendencia Original Title: Perpetual Contracts on Stocks: The New Frontier Challenging the CME Original Link: Perpetual contracts on stocks are evolving from a curiosity in the crypto market into an instrument capable of completely altering the dynamics of global trading.

Arthur Hayes argues that this leap is not only inevitable but imminent: perpetuals on the Nasdaq 100 already exceed $100 million daily on platforms like Hyperliquid and could become the new standard for trading tech stocks by 2026.

According to the analysis, this transition will directly challenge the traditional futures model dominated by the CME and will force legacy exchanges to compete under rules they do not control.

TradFi’s Achilles’ Heel: Clearinghouses

In the traditional system, clearinghouses must guarantee full settlement in any scenario, which imposes a structural limit on the leverage available to retail traders.

That legacy architecture works for classic derivatives, but it is incompatible with the global demands of a market that operates without interruption.

Perpetual contracts on stocks break that restriction:

• They have no expiration date. • They require less capital to be locked up. • They allow for much higher leverage. • They avoid splitting liquidity across multiple quarterly contracts.

For Hayes, this competitive advantage means that global traders will prefer a perpetual traded on a crypto exchange over a traditional future with limited hours and lower leverage. That preference is a direct threat to the CME’s historic dominance in index and stock derivatives.

The Offshore Market Will Be the First to Migrate

The essay anticipates that the leap will not happen first on Wall Street, but in international markets where users already trade cryptocurrencies 24/7.

A trader in Seoul, Dubai, or São Paulo can access BTC with leverage from their phone at any time. Applying that same logic to stocks like NVDA, TSLA, or indices like the Nasdaq 100 is a natural next step.

Hayes emphasizes that this adoption does not require tokenizing stocks: the funding and margin model of perpetuals is already proven and widely accepted by millions of crypto users. Therefore, when the ability to trade US stocks under this structure becomes widespread, the migration will be rapid and large-scale.

Politics, Regulation, and the Shift That Opened the Door

A key part of the analysis explains that the advance of perpetuals on stocks depends on the US regulatory stance, which shifted abruptly with recent political changes.

According to Hayes, regulators moved from being hostile after the collapse of FTX to showing receptiveness toward products linked to the crypto ecosystem. This change favors competition between financial systems and sees cryptocurrencies as a counterbalance to big banks.

As most global regulators tend to follow the US standard, this shift enabled exchanges like SGX in Singapore to launch their own perpetuals, something unthinkable just a few years ago.

2026: When Price Discovery Could Change Hands

Hayes projects that by the end of 2026, the price reference for the largest US indices could come from perpetual contracts traded on crypto exchanges.

The reason is simple:

• They operate 24/7. • They attract both retail and professional global liquidity. • They offer higher leverage than traditional futures. • They do not depend on trading windows or slow clearing systems.

If this prediction comes true, it would be the first time that an instrument born in the crypto ecosystem challenges—and potentially replaces—a core derivative of the traditional financial system.