Perpetual contracts on stocks: the new frontier that challenges 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 of the crypto market into an instrument capable of completely altering the dynamics of global trading.

Arthur Hayes argues that this jump 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 in 2026.

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

The Achilles' heel of TradFi: clearinghouses

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

That inherited 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 do not expire. • They require less tied-up capital. • They allow much higher leverage. • They avoid splitting liquidity into multiple quarterly contracts.

For Hayes, this competitive differential implies that the global trader 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 historical dominance of the CME in index and equity derivatives.

The offshore market will be the first to migrate

The essay anticipates that the jump will not occur first on Wall Street, but in international markets where users are already trading 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 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 users in crypto. Therefore, when the possibility of trading U.S. stocks under that structure becomes widespread, the migration will be swift and on a large scale.

Policy, regulation and the turn that opened the door

A key part of the analysis explains that the advancement of perpetuals over stocks depends on the U.S. regulatory stance, which changed abruptly in 2025.

According to Hayes, regulators shifted from being hostile after the collapse of FTX to showing receptiveness towards products linked to the crypto ecosystem. This change does not occur for financial reasons, but for political ones: the new government favors competition among financial systems and sees cryptocurrencies as a counterbalance to the large banks.

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

2026: when price formation could change hands

Hayes projects that by the end of 2026 the price reference of the major U.S. indices could emerge from perpetual contracts traded on crypto exchanges.

The reason is simple:

• They operate 24/7. • They attract global retail and professional liquidity. • They offer greater leverage than a traditional future. • They do not depend on time 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 central derivative of the traditional financial system.