derivatives

According to a research report published by RootData Research, the total trading volume of mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges in the TradFi sector surpassed $1.3 trillion in the first half of 2026, nearly a tenfold increase compared to the entire year of 2025, with TradFi derivatives accounting for over 98%, becoming the core engine driving the explosive growth of the sector.The exchange landscape is shifting from "unipolar concentration" to multipolar competition. Binance, while maintaining a leading position in the TradFi sector with a cumulative share of 68.3%, saw its monthly trading volume share decline from 78.8% at the beginning of the year to 58.2% in August. Meanwhile, second-tier exchanges such as OKX, Gate, and Hyperliquid are rapidly expanding, with market shares of 18.2%, 10.7%, and 9.9% respectively in August.In the core submarket of stock derivatives, entering August, Binance still dominated with an average daily trading volume of $14.927 billion; OKX established an advantage in trading costs with the industry's lowest spread of 0.0091%, achieving a comprehensive score tied for second with Gate. Gate has recently shown independent growth, recording four consecutive months of triple-digit month-on-month growth from May to August, and in mid-August, its ±2% weighted depth ranked first in the industry for 11 consecutive trading days. The competitive logic of the TradFi sector may be shifting from a battle for traffic to a competition across comprehensive dimensions such as position size, market depth, trading costs, and variety coverage.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand (SEC) has proposed allowing intermediaries to provide certain digital asset derivatives traded overseas to retail investors. According to the proposal, eligible products must be similar to crypto derivatives traded domestically in Thailand, including aspects such as underlying assets, duration, leverage, and settlement methods. At the same time, these products must be traded on exchanges that adopt central counterparty clearing and are supervised by regulatory bodies belonging to specific international regulatory or exchange organizations.Crypto derivatives that do not meet the above conditions will only be available to institutional investors. The Thai SEC stated that institutional investors are better equipped to assess and manage complex and high-risk products. Current rules only allow intermediaries to provide relevant investment services to retail and high-net-worth clients when overseas derivatives are similar to domestic trading products, while overseas crypto derivatives, due to their varying structures and risk levels, require targeted regulations.This consultation is the latest initiative by Thailand to incorporate crypto-related products into the regulated capital market. The Thai SEC officially designated cryptocurrencies and digital tokens as permissible derivative underlying assets in a notice issued on March 5 and is discussing potential contract specifications with the Thailand Futures Exchange. The consultation will continue until September 30, and the Thai SEC has not yet announced the proposed implementation date for the revisions.

On Monday, CME Group officially launched two multi-asset cryptocurrency benchmark indices, one covering a broad market index and a "Emerging Crypto Index" specifically measuring large crypto assets beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. The CME CF Emerging Crypto Index excludes Bitcoin and Ethereum, tracking a total of 10 assets: BNB, XRP, SOL, HYPE, LINK, XLM, SUI, UNI, AVAX, and AAVE; while the CME CF Crypto Market Index includes Bitcoin and Ethereum in addition to the aforementioned 10 assets.Both indices are weighted by free float market capitalization and undergo component adjustments and rebalancing every six months. The real-time version is calculated once per second and operates around the clock; the settlement version is calculated once daily and published at 4 PM London, New York, and Singapore/Hong Kong time. The methodology for the Emerging Index requires component assets to meet custody conditions, exclude meme coins, and set protocol usage rate screening thresholds based on the ratio of total locked value to total market capitalization. At the time of initial inclusion, assets that do not yet meet the general listing standards for cryptocurrency ETFs on U.S. national securities exchanges but are expected to be compliant within 30 days may temporarily enter the index with a maximum combined weight of 10%.The index is designed to be investable and can be used for passive replication by funds and derivative settlements, continuing the precedent set by CME's launch of Nasdaq CME Crypto Index futures in June. CF Benchmarks stated that the Emerging Index can be licensed for financial products, investment funds, or derivative instruments.

According to the latest ranking of stock derivatives exchanges released by RootData, Binance, Hyperliquid, Gate, Bitget, OKX, Bybit, MEXC, XT.COM, Bitunix, and WEEX are in the top ten.Among them, Binance ranks first with a score of 96.2, holding approximately $3.454 billion, a 24h trading volume of approximately $6.17 billion, and a market share of 41.83%. Hyperliquid ranks second with a score of 95.3, holding approximately $1.761 billion, a 24h trading volume of approximately $1.491 billion, and a market share of 10.11%. Gate ranks third with a score of 95.1, holding approximately $841 million, a 24h trading volume of approximately $990 million, and a market share of 6.71%.

BitGo announced the completion of its acquisition of NYDIG's institutional trading business, which was completed in a two-step merger, with a total consideration of approximately $42.5 million, including $7 million in cash and about $35.5 million in BitGo stock. About 30 NYDIG employees will transition with the business, and the deal also includes Earnout terms linked to revenue milestones.The business provides derivatives, structured products, financing, and capital market solutions for asset management firms, hedge funds, corporations, and family offices. BitGo CEO Mike Belshe stated that institutional clients are increasingly looking to partner with trusted partners that can support the entire lifecycle of digital assets, covering custody, trading, financing, and settlement.For NYDIG, the sale allows it to focus on power generation, Bitcoin mining, and high-performance computing data center businesses, with the company stating that its development pipeline exceeds 3 gigawatts. BitGo went public on the NYSE this year, with a valuation of approximately $2 billion, and launched the USDS stablecoin.

The cryptocurrency protocol Ethena, which issued $4 billion in synthetic US dollars (USDe), announced plans to expand its basis trading strategy to stock perpetual contracts. According to Ethena's data, the open interest in stock perpetual contracts has grown tenfold to $6.2 billion since March. Over the past few months, the funding rates on Hyperliquid and Binance averaged approximately 14% and 17.5%, respectively, while the Bitcoin funding rate during the same period was only in the low single digits.Ethena pointed out that the average Bitcoin funding rate was 11% in 2024, 4.9% in 2025, and has dropped to 2.2% as of August 11 this year. In contrast, stock perpetual contracts had positive funding rates on 94% of trading days on Hyperliquid and 97% on Binance, with a median funding rate of 13.9%, while Bitcoin's was 3.9%. Co-founder Guy Young stated that stocks tend to rise in the long term, creating a continuous demand for leveraged longs to pay fees, and that the funding rate for stocks has almost no correlation with Bitcoin, providing USDe with a revenue source that relies less on the crypto market.The global stock market had a market capitalization of approximately $166.5 trillion in July, far exceeding the crypto market's approximately $2.2 trillion. This expansion is one of Ethena's initiatives to seek new revenue sources after the supply of USDe fell from a peak of about $15 billion to below $5 billion. Last week, it also announced a $1 billion financing arrangement with FalconX.

The Gate stock derivatives section is now online with pre-market trading for the SHEINUSDT perpetual contract, settled in USDT, supporting 1-10x leverage.SHEINUSDT corresponds to SHEIN, a cross-border e-commerce company that is listed with a dual-class share structure in Hong Kong.

Ripple's multi-asset brokerage business Ripple Prime has launched the Delta One service aimed at institutional investors, officially expanding into the U.S. equity derivatives market. This service allows clients to execute total return swaps linked to U.S. listed stocks, indices, and digital assets, and supports cross-asset margin calculations.Noel Kimmel, President of Ripple Prime, stated that this is an important step in the development of Ripple Prime and a natural extension of the platform. The service is primarily aimed at financial institutions such as hedge funds and asset management companies, allowing clients to trade around the clock through a single counterparty. Ripple Prime currently has over $1 billion in regulatory net capital.Ripple Prime was renamed after Ripple's $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road completed in October 2025. In August of this year, Ripple Prime completed a $275 million private placement of senior unsecured notes, and in May, it secured $200 million in debt financing from a fund managed by Neuberger Specialty Finance to expand its institutional lending capabilities.

The Hyperliquid Policy Center stated on platform X that perpetual contracts should be at the core of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) innovation agenda. The agency submitted a statement regarding the first meeting of the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee on August 20, pointing out that perpetual contracts are gradually expanding beyond the digital asset market to traditional asset classes such as stocks and commodities, and that demand for this product among U.S. market participants is rising.Perpetual contracts can meet the risk management needs of different market participants, making them particularly suitable for airlines hedging fuel costs, investment funds managing portfolio exposure, and AI developers addressing ongoing risks related to computing costs that do not have a clear expiration date. Compared to futures with fixed expiration dates, perpetual contracts do not require rolling over, and there are no expiration and delivery issues; they anchor contract prices to the underlying assets through periodic funding rates. Currently, on Hyperliquid, perpetual contracts deployed by third-party developers cover over 80 traditional commodity and stock markets, with a cumulative notional trading volume exceeding $500 billion.This year, the CFTC has taken several measures to promote the establishment of the perpetual contract market in the U.S. In May, the CFTC approved the first perpetual futures contract listed in the U.S. and issued a policy statement and continuous trading guidance regarding the listing of perpetual contracts; in June, the CFTC sought public opinion on extending perpetual contracts to energy commodities and further consulted on computing power derivatives.In addition, the Hyperliquid Policy Center believes that on-chain infrastructure can also promote the modernization of the U.S. derivatives market within the existing regulatory framework. Public blockchains can openly record markets, orders, and positions, continuously conduct margin assessments programmatically, and enable real-time collateral transfers, thereby reducing counterparty credit risk and settlement risk. The agency will continue to provide relevant research and technical documents to the CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee and committee staff, and promote the establishment of a pathway for U.S. market participants to compliantly access on-chain markets. The agency believes that perpetual contracts are one of the most representative financial innovations of the past decade and should be further developed in the U.S. market.

The price of Bitcoin has retreated after a cumulative increase of 23% over the past 7 days, currently maintaining around $79,000, with a drop of about 1.2% in the past 24 hours. The broader CoinDesk 20 index has fallen by 2.1% in the past 24 hours. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index from Alternative.me has risen from 27 to 74 in less than two weeks, followed by a slight retreat.However, underlying demand remains strong. According to SoSoValue data, the U.S.-listed spot Bitcoin ETF recorded a net inflow of $314 million on Tuesday, marking the seventh consecutive day of net inflows, bringing the cumulative net inflow for August to over $3 billion. Mercado Bitcoin research analyst Pedro Fontes views $82,000 and $85,000 as the next resistance levels and believes that some consolidation after such a vertical rise is natural.In terms of derivatives data, the taker long-short trading volume ratio has turned bearish, with shorts accounting for 51.64% of the 24-hour volume; Bitcoin futures open interest has dropped below 700,000 BTC, and the spot price has retreated to $78,500. The combination of these factors indicates that traders are closing positions rather than aggressively adding shorts. Traders on Deribit are chasing call options with strike prices ranging from $82,000 to $100,000. SUI futures open interest has reached a historical high of 838 million contracts, but its spot price has fallen over 5% in the past 24 hours, indicating that short positions are accumulating.

According to the latest ranking of stock derivatives exchanges released by RootData, the three exchanges with the largest spreads among the listed exchanges are HTX, BingX, and OrangeX, with spreads reaching 0.856%, 0.332%, and 0.258%, respectively.It is worth noting that these three exchanges have ranked in the top three for spreads for several consecutive days. RootData reminds that this spread is the weighted spread based on 24h trading volume, and a higher value usually indicates higher trading costs.

Coinbase's policy head Faryar Shirzad stated that Coinbase has submitted a joint request for comments to the CFTC and SEC regarding the definition of perpetual derivatives products and alternative compliance pathways. He emphasized that it is essential to address the complexities of definitions and overlapping regulatory jurisdictions so that the U.S. can bring relevant activities under domestic regulation.Shirzad pointed out that clarifying the rules helps safely open relevant opportunities to U.S. consumers and maintain the competitiveness of the U.S. against foreign jurisdictions that already have significant first-mover advantages in this field. This response focuses on product definitions and compliance arrangements, aiming to promote the regulation of perpetual derivatives in the U.S.

The DEX Arcus, built by the dYdX team, has launched a new protocol on the Robinhood Chain that converts perpetual contract positions into transferable ERC-20 tokens and allows users to use tokenized stocks as collateral for leveraged trading.The products launched by the protocol include pBTC3x and pHOOD3x, which provide 3x exposure to Bitcoin and the Robinhood stock token HOOD, respectively. Its multi-collateral feature initially supports SPY, QQQ, and MAG7 stock tokens, with a loan-to-value ratio of 50%, allowing users to use tokenized stocks as collateral for perpetual contract positions.Arcus CEO Eddie Zhang stated that traditional markets have taken decades to make complex investment strategies accessible through products like leveraged ETFs, and the next step is to integrate these strategies natively into blockchain infrastructure. Since its launch on the Robinhood Chain, Arcus has accumulated a trading volume of over $250 million, with an average daily trading volume exceeding $33 million; since its launch on July 1, the Robinhood Chain has reached a TVL of $596 million, ranking among the top 15 in DeFi TVL.

According to the latest ranking of stock derivatives exchanges published by RootData, the three exchanges with the largest spreads among the listed exchanges are HTX, Crypto.com, and OrangeX, with spreads of 0.904%, 0.452%, and 0.357% respectively.Among them, HTX ranks first with a spread of 0.904%, which is about 90 times that of the exchange with the smallest spread on the list. Currently, the exchanges with the smallest spreads on the list are Binance, Gate, and OKX, all with a spread of 0.01%.It is reported that this spread is the 24h transaction volume weighted spread, and a higher value typically indicates higher trading costs.

According to the latest report from DefiLlama, Gate's trading activity remains at the forefront of the industry, with a total trading volume of approximately $9.5 billion in spot and derivatives over the past 24 hours, ranking third globally and exceeding some mainstream trading platforms by about 40%. DefiLlama pointed out that Gate's trading structure is clearly biased towards derivatives, and the continuously growing scale of related trading has become an important support for its market competitiveness, creating a distinct business advantage among centralized exchanges.In addition to ranking third globally in trading volume, Gate's open interest also ranks among the top three worldwide, currently reaching $12.48 billion, further reflecting the scale of its derivatives business and market participation. DefiLlama noted that compared to its reserve size, Gate demonstrates a more outstanding trading performance, supporting a large derivatives trading volume with a relatively streamlined asset scale. The simultaneous entry of trading volume and open interest into the industry's top three core indicators reflects Gate's leading performance in capital capacity, user participation, and overall market competitiveness.

According to the latest stock derivatives exchange ranking released by RootData, the Top 5 exchanges saw a decline in 24h trading volume across the board.Among them, Binance had a 24h trading volume of approximately $21.033 billion, down 31.04%; Hyperliquid had a 24h trading volume of approximately $3.681 billion, down 31.01%; Gate had a 24h trading volume of approximately $2.805 billion, down 43.16%; OKX had a 24h trading volume of approximately $4.7 billion, down 41.39%; and Bitget had a 24h trading volume of approximately $2.2 billion, down 26.92%.At the same time, the positions in the crypto native contract market have significantly increased. According to Coinglass data, the total open interest for Bitcoin contracts is approximately 734,900 BTC (about $54.967 billion), with a 24h increase of 5.65%; the total open interest for Ethereum contracts is approximately 13,140,700 ETH (about $30.917 billion), with a 24h increase of 5.17%.

On August 19, 2026, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a request for comments to better understand and regulate the compute derivatives market. CFTC Chairman Michael S. Selig stated that for the U.S. to win the AI race, a robust compute derivatives market is needed, just as the U.S. market once established standards for commodity trading required by the industrial economy, it will also establish corresponding markets for core commodities of the intelligent economy. This request for comments is the first step in establishing clear rules for the U.S. computing market.The request for comments focuses on the scale, liquidity, and other considerations of the compute spot market, as well as issues related to market regulation and manipulation risks, customer protection, perpetual compute futures, and welcomes opinions on all aspects of the compute market. The comment period is 60 days from the publication in the Federal Register.

According to the latest ranking of stock derivatives exchanges released by RootData, among the top twenty exchanges, the only one with a decline in trading volume over the past 24 hours is MEXC, with a drop of 45.29%.

According to the latest stock derivatives exchange ranking released by RootData, the one with the highest spread in the Top 10 is SuperEx, with a spread of 0.092%. Among the top three exchanges in the overall ranking, Binance has a spread of 0.011%, Gate has 0.005%, and OKX has 0.007%.It is reported that this spread is the weighted spread based on the 24-hour trading volume, and a higher value typically indicates higher trading costs.