Arthur Hayes: Crypto Perps to Kill Traditional Stock Exchanges

Arthur Hayes, the outspoken co-founder of BitMEX, traces the disruptive potential of perpetual futures back to his own platform’s innovation. The perpetual swap, a futures-like product with no expiry that BitMEX pioneered, fundamentally reshaped crypto trading by concentrating liquidity into single ‘delta one’ contracts that track spot prices while enabling high leverage. According to Hayes, this design solved two critical demands from retail traders: access to substantial leverage and deep liquidity, without the legal risk of owing more than their initial margin if trades turn sour.

The success of this model is now leaking into traditional equity markets. Hayes highlights Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 protocol, which enabled a firm called XYZ to launch a Nasdaq 100 equity perpetual that already trades over $100 million in daily volume. This demonstrates the growing appetite for equity perps, which Hayes predicts will become ‘the hottest product of 2026’ as both centralized exchanges and decentralized platforms race to list them.

Hayes’ central argument hinges on the structural limitations of traditional clearinghouses like CME. He contends they’re constrained by under-capitalized guarantee funds, strict retail leverage restrictions, and legacy operating hours that cannot keep pace with today’s 24/7 information cycle. These limitations create significant friction for traders who must park large sums with exchanges—a growing concern in an industry that has endured multiple hacks and failures.

In contrast, crypto perpetual swaps flip this model by allowing traders to post less collateral while maintaining meaningful exposure. The socialized loss systems and insurance funds common in crypto perps protect retail traders from catastrophic losses, creating a more accessible and efficient trading environment. Hayes believes these advantages will eventually see the largest derivatives on key U.S. benchmarks like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 traded as perps on crypto exchanges rather than traditional futures on CME.

The regulatory landscape has played a crucial role in this convergence. Hayes points to significant changes in U.S. policy following the FTX collapse and his own legal battles with the CFTC. Under the Trump administration in 2025, he notes a more crypto-friendly stance has emerged, opening doors to sandbox-style experiments for new derivatives and encouraging global regulators to follow Washington’s lead.

This regulatory shift has given established exchanges like SGX the confidence to pursue perpetual listings, while crypto-native platforms continue to innovate. The convergence is already underway, with traditional exchanges like CBOE and SGX preparing to roll out their own perpetual products by the end of 2025—a clear acknowledgment that the market is moving in this direction regardless of traditional finance’s readiness.

While making bold predictions about market structure, Hayes remains an active and sometimes controversial trader himself. Recent on-chain data shows him offloading significant positions in ETH, ENA, ETHFI, LDO, AAVE, and UNI following a steep market drop—a move that contrasts with his previous hints about not taking profits on his ETH holdings.

The clear outlier in his recent positioning is privacy coin ZEC, which he publicly praised on X after it delivered triple-digit monthly gains while outperforming the broader altcoin market. This selective positioning demonstrates Hayes’ continued engagement with crypto markets even as he predicts their structural innovations will overwhelm traditional finance.