Mentioned in This Week's Report
| Coinbase & Kalshi | Celebrated regulatory wins in crypto perps, which remain more than 90% of the whole perps pie. |
| Crypto.com | Launched heavily geo-restricted equity perps, adding to commodity, ETF, and index perps rolled out in April. |
| Aster & Orderly | The only exchanges in the black this week as far as week-over-week RWA perps volume goes; OKX stayed basically flat, also an achievement in a week like this. |
After explosive trading volume in the first quarter, RWA perps haven't shown consistent growth. A slow, four-week climb ended as markets slipped back below $55B in volume this week.
Many eyes are turning toward policy as the key unlock, and regulated exchanges are no doubt watching the volume chill with a small sense of relief as they celebrate wins in perps on a limited set of crypto assets.
Meanwhile, perpetual futures on traditional assets are showing signs of maturity and increasing utility: volume by asset class is shifting toward the kind of distribution seen in traditional markets; there are signs that price discovery is taking place on weekends and in pre-IPO perps.
Have regulators noticed? On Friday, the CFTC approved Kalshi's first perpetual contract, opening the door for more onshore perps on bitcoin and 15 other "digital commodities," but explicitly keeping RWA perps on case-by-case review, and specifically casting skepticism that agricultural commodity perps could ever be viable. (Hint: they are concerned about continuous reference price reliability.)
That leaves offshore and decentralized venues in control, and regulated exchanges maneuvering in what looks like the pre-start phase of the America's Cup. This week, Crypto.com rolled out about two dozen US equity perps. The Singapore-headquartered exchange has licenses in several jurisdictions, and currently has $165M in weekly RWA perps volume, mostly on index, ETF, and commodity perps launched in April, despite a list of 70+ restricted countries where users are barred from trading them. (We just this week added their volume data to our tracker.)
Meanwhile, Coinbase (COIN) celebrated a CFTC no-action letter, announced Friday, on the foreign markets it operates through its Deribit subsidiary. This allows the NY-headquartered company to present a path to trading for its US institutional clients, as it continues to build up its RWA perps offering—down 35% this week at $501M in volume, but still well above the $142M where it started, the first week of May.
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Tweet of the Week
Tweet of the Week goes to Sam Ruskin of Reciprocal Ventures for pointing out that regulatory capture doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. After all, in the US there's a $750T annual (Stork Research estimate) short-dated options market for RWA perps to eat.
Weekly Volume by Category
If RWA perps growth is stagnating, it may be a symptom of a regime shift away from a market led by commodity perps volume and toward one led by equity perps. Equity perps are now more than a third of the RWA perps market at $18.4B, having begun the month of April below 10% at $6.4B. ETFs have also marched, now 4.8% of the market at $2.6B. Commodities are still 56.4%, with $30.7B in volume this week.
Top Assets by Volume
The top assets by volume chart continues to tell the story of a maturing market looking more like asset-class distribution in traditional derivatives. Notably, the top four underlying assets are now no longer all commodities, as Micron Technologies (MU) has flipped Brent for the No. 4 spot in volume, leading the AI trade that fills out the rest of the equity perps in the top 10. The two index perps, the sole beachhead against Binance on this chart (held solely by Hyperliquid), haven't exactly fallen back—volume about where it was at the beginning of May—they just haven’t grown like the equities have.
Top Assets by Growth
The underlying assets by growth is a mix of meme stocks, AI darlings, aeronautics stocks that orbit the SpaceX IPO, and Disney. Notable bubbling under: SKHYNIX, which grew to $141.4M this past week, 95% of that on Lighter.
New Listings
Once again, Bitget leads in listing perps not seen elsewhere in the market (which is what we track in this table). But OKX leads in average daily volume on new listings with far fewer markets. There’s a new pre-IPO rush to list Quantinuum (QNT), but not a ton of volume yet. Other notable listings not shown here: Hibachi FX perps launch, a Sui blockchain launch with Astros commodity perps, and an Aptos blockchain launch with Decibel adding equities.
Fastest-Growing Exchanges
The pullback in RWA perps volume this week impacted every exchange, with the best (DEXs Aster and Orderly) only showing single-digit percentage growth—in a market where it’s been routine to see exchanges post triple-digit percentage gains. OKX stayed roughly flat while Binance (which at $28.2B handles more than double the weekly volume of the No. 2 exchange, Hyperliquid) impacts the entire market with a 5.7% drop. Of the 12 exchanges we track, EdgeX saw the worst dip in weekly RWA perps volume, dropping 40% to $645.9M.
Notes
This issue covers the week ending May 31, and draws on volume data from Aster, Binance, Bitget, Bybit, Coinbase International, Crypto.com, Dreamcash and Trade[XYZ] on Hyperliquid, EdgeX, Grvt, Kraken, Lighter, Orderly, and OKX.
If you have questions about methodology or other data you’re seeking, please get in touch: [email protected].