Picture this: it’s 3:17 a.m. on a random Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange is fast asleep, and yet the “real” price of Apple or Tesla is being hammered out right now—on a decentralized crypto platform halfway across the world. Sounds crazy? That’s exactly what one of the sharpest minds in the game thinks is already starting to happen.
Arthur Hayes, the man who basically invented the modern crypto perpetual swap, just went on record saying we’re on the cusp of the biggest power shift in global finance since electronic trading itself. And honestly? After digging into what he’s seeing on-chain and behind the scenes, it’s getting harder and harder to argue with him.
The Quiet Revolution Nobody’s Talking About (Yet)
Most people still think stocks trade on the NYSE or Nasdaq, full stop. But Hayes is pointing at something far more radical: price discovery—the actual moment when buyers and sellers agree what something is truly worth—is slipping away from traditional venues and landing in 24/7 crypto perpetual markets.
And before you roll your eyes and say “yeah, sure, another crypto bro prediction,” consider this: the exact same thing already happened inside crypto itself. Remember when Bitcoin price discovery lived on Mt. Gox? Then BitMEX perpetuals came along and sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Hayes lived through that shift. Actually, he engineered it.
Now he’s watching the early signals of the same pattern repeating—except this time the victim isn’t some shady exchange in Tokyo. It’s the entire legacy equity complex.
Why Perpetual Swaps Beat Everything Traditional Finance Built
Let’s break down why perpetual contracts are such absolute monsters compared to traditional futures.
- No expiration dates = all liquidity concentrates in one contract instead of spreading across months
- Funding rate mechanism keeps the price glued to spot without physical delivery headaches
- 100x (or higher) leverage available to anyone with an internet connection
- Socialized loss systems and insurance funds mean retail can’t blow up the whole exchange
- 24/7/365 trading—because news doesn’t respect Wall Street hours
Traditional futures look like relics by comparison. Quarterly rolls, limited leverage for retail, trading halts, weekend gaps, undercapitalized clearinghouses… it’s a laundry list of friction that crypto simply erased.
The perpetual swap is the most elegant derivative ever created. Everything else is just coping with legacy constraints.
– Pretty much the entire crypto trading community at this point
The Proof Is Already Trading: Hyperliquid and the Nasdaq Perp
Hayes didn’t just make a bold claim and walk away. He pointed to something very concrete: a Nasdaq 100 perpetual contract launched permissionlessly on Hyperliquid via HIP-3. A random team called XYZ dropped it, and it’s already doing real volume.
Think about that for a second. A decentralized platform let someone launch a leveraged Nasdaq product without asking anyone’s permission, and traders showed up in droves. That’s the kind of innovation speed traditional finance can’t even dream about.
In my view, this is the “iPhone moment” for equity derivatives. Once retail traders experience 100x leverage on the Nasdaq with no trading hours and no KYC friction? Good luck getting them back into a brokerage account that closes at 4 p.m.
The Regulatory Dam Just Broke
Timing is everything, and 2025 delivered the perfect storm.
After years of SEC crackdowns and CFTC lawsuits (some of which Hayes knows intimately), the political winds flipped almost overnight. The new administration’s crypto-friendly stance created breathing room for experimentation that simply didn’t exist in 2022-2024.
Suddenly exchanges in Singapore, Australia, and even parts of Europe are racing to list perpetuals on traditional indices. CBOE is reportedly working on extended-hours products that smell suspiciously like warmed-over crypto perps. Everyone can smell which way the wind is blowing.
What This Actually Means for Traditional Exchanges
It’s adapt or die—and most haven’t adapted yet.
CME and ICE have massive guarantee funds, sure, but they’re still stuck with legacy rules: limited retail leverage, trading hours that haven’t changed since the 90s, and clearing systems that require you to post way more collateral than necessary.
Crypto platforms? They solved all of that years ago. Insurance funds eat the losses from over-leveraged traders. Socialized clawbacks spread pain evenly. And because everything settles in stablecoins, there’s no counterparty drama when someone goes bust.
Hayes’s prediction is stark: by the late 2020s, the biggest S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 derivatives won’t be the quarterly futures on CME. They’ll be perpetuals trading on a mix of centralized crypto exchanges and fully decentralized platforms.
The Retail Trader’s Paradise (That Scares Regulators Silently)
Perhaps the most interesting angle is what this means for regular traders.
Right now, if you want serious leverage on US indices, you’re either an institutional client or you’re stuck with CFD brokers that everyone knows are sketchy. Crypto changes the equation completely.
- Deposit $1,000 USDT → get 100x on the S&P 500 → control $100,000 notional
- Trade Sunday night when China data drops
- Never worry about quarterly rollover again
- Get rekt? Only lose your margin, insurance fund covers the rest
It’s not hard to see why this is addictive. And once millions of retail traders outside the US (and increasingly inside) get a taste, the volume on traditional venues starts looking anemic.
Where We Are in the Adoption Curve
Make no mistake—we’re still early. Most equity perpetual volume is still tiny compared to spot crypto or even crypto perps. But the growth curves are hockey-stick shaped.
I’ve watched similar patterns before. Remember when people laughed at the idea that Bitcoin futures would matter? Then CME launched them and everyone realized the game changed. This feels bigger.
The pieces are all falling into place:
- Regulatory green lights (or at least yellow)
- Battle-tested tech from the crypto wars
- Retail traders desperate for better tools
- Traditional players moving too slowly
What Happens Next
2026 is going to be wild.
Every major crypto exchange will list S&P 500 and Nasdaq perpetuals if they haven’t already. The decentralized platforms will go even harder—imagine anyone launching a perpetual on whatever index they want, permissionlessly.
Traditional exchanges will respond with extended hours and higher leverage products, but they’ll be playing catch-up with one hand tied behind their back by regulators who still don’t fully understand what’s happening.
And somewhere in the background, Arthur Hayes will be watching the order books, probably smiling, remembering when he built the weapon that’s now pointed at the heart of traditional finance.
The shift has already started. The only question is how long it takes for everyone else to notice.
In a world that never sleeps, why should our markets?
