Arthur Hayes: Crypto Perpetual Futures Will Destroy Traditional Stock Markets

Arthur Hayes predicts that stock criminals on crypto exchanges will overtake CME-like futures and erode legacy stock markets.

Outspoken co-founder of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, has said that crypto-style perpetual futures will “kill” traditional stock exchanges, arguing that stock price discovery will shift to 24/7 perp markets on crypto platforms.

His prediction comes as US and Asian exchanges such as CBOE and SGX are gearing up to launch their own perpetual products by the end of 2025. Hayes describes this as an “adapt or die” moment for traditional finance (TradFi), claiming that if established exchanges do not copy the perp model and socialized loss margin systems of cryptocurrencies, they will lose liquidity and relevance to more nimble crypto venues and DEXs.

Perpetrators are becoming mainstream as Crypto and TradFi converge

In his latest essay, the crypto trader revisited how BitMEX’s invention of the perpetual swap, a futures-like product with no expiration date, reshaped cryptocurrency trading by concentrating liquidity in a single “delta one” contract that closely tracks spot prices while allowing high leverage.

He argued that, combined with socialized loss systems and insurance funds, perpetrators have solved two things retailers want most: access to large debt and deep liquidity, without the legal risk of owing more than their initial margin if a trade goes wrong.

According to Hayes, that design is now leaking into stocks. He highlighted Hyperliquid’s HIP-3, a permissionless protocol that allowed a company called XYZ to launch a Nasdaq 100 stock fund that already trades more than $100 million in daily volume.

According to him, stock criminals will become “the hottest product of 2026”, with both centralized exchanges and decentralized platforms rushing to bring them to market by the end of next year.

The former CEO of BitMEX also pointed to changes in the US regulatory landscape. After years of hostility following the collapse of the FTX and his own legal battle with the CFTC, he says the mood changed again in 2025 under President Trump, whose administration has taken a more crypto-friendly stance.

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That, he said, has opened the door for sandbox-style experimentation with new derivatives and prompted global regulators to follow Washington’s lead, giving exchanges like SGX the confidence to go after the perpetrators list.

Why Hayes thinks perpetrators will overtake the CME

Hayes’ central claim is that by the end of this decade, the largest derivatives on major US benchmarks such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 will be offenders traded on crypto exchanges, rather than futures listed on CME and other incumbents.

He said traditional clearinghouses are limited by undercapitalized guarantee funds, strict rules around retail leverage and outdated operating hours that cannot keep pace with a 24/7 information cycle.

Perpetual swaps, he said, reversed that model by letting traders post less collateral while still having access to meaningful exposure, reducing the need to park large sums on an exchange, which is becoming a sensitive issue in an industry that has endured multiple hacks and failures.

Hayes himself remains an active and sometimes controversial trader. Recent on-chain data showed him shedding significant positions in ETH, ENA, ETHFI, LDO, AAVE, and UNI after a steep market decline, even though he had previously hinted that he would not take profits on his ETH stack.

The clear outlier in his recent positioning is the privacy coin ZEC, which he praised at X after it outperformed the broader altcoin market with triple-digit monthly gains.