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From 0.5% to 23%: Wall Street’s crypto perps takeover explained

source-logo  ambcrypto.com 3 h
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After a lot of objection, criticism, and denial, Wall Street is moving onto crypto rails.

According to Bloomberg, crypto exchanges are expanding beyond cryptocurrencies into round-the-clock markets for stocks and commodities. The huge increase in “perpetual futures” trading linked to stocks and commodities further confirmed this sentiment.

How did one month change things for good?

In August, these contracts generated $778 billion in Trading Volume across major crypto venues. They represented 23.48% of all Perpetual Futures activity, compared with only 0.5% in November 2025.

At the same time, their centralized-exchange volume reached $665.42 billion in August, up from only $11.58 billion in January.

Source: CoinBureau

The main reason behind this surge is that crypto platforms are attracting traditional-asset trading because perpetual futures offer 24/7 access. This makes stocks, ETFs, and commodities easier to trade through crypto infrastructure.

For instance, though the SpaceX-linked SPCX contract is private, investors can speculate on its valuation without owning the actual stock—thanks to crypto perpetuals trading.

This was further validated by Binance accounting for about $433.4 billion of TradFi perpetual volume, with most of that coming from equity-linked contracts.

That said, the list also includes Bybit and Hyperliquid, as even these are becoming important venues for traditional-asset speculation.

What does this mean for the crypto market?

In simple words, some individual stocks can experience larger price swings than Bitcoin [BTC], creating attractive opportunities for traders seeking volatility.

Through perpetual contracts on crypto platforms, traders can take leveraged long or short positions on assets such as Nvidia, Tesla, gold, or oil, often 24/7, even when traditional markets are closed.

All in all, if this trend continues, exchanges such as Binance, Bybit, and Hyperliquid could increasingly compete with traditional brokers and futures exchanges.

As expected, the crypto community applauded this milestone, as one of them noted,

Source: X

The August flipover

This comes at a time when the crypto market surged to new heights. However, at press time, the global cryptocurrency market cap was changing hands at $2.77 trillion, marking a 1.2% drop in the past 24 hours.

But with the ETF market seeing a huge influx in August 2026, the market appears to still be in a bullish run.

Source: SoSo Value

As AMBCrypto reported, Bitcoin’s role as “digital gold” may be strengthening as its market behavior increasingly resembles gold rather than technology stocks.


Final Summary

  • Stock-linked perpetual futures on centralized-exchange volume reached $665.42 billion in August.
  • If the momentum sustains, Binance, Bybit, and Hyperliquid could compete with traditional brokers.
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