Crypto exchanges processed $1.32 trillion in perpetual futures tied to traditional assets during the first five months of 2026, compared with $104.21 billion in all of 2025, according to CoinGecko. Monthly volume rose from $230 million in January 2025 to $347.17 billion in May 2026.
About two years ago, Wall Street began bringing crypto into traditional finance through exchange-traded funds, custody services, funds and other regulated products. Crypto exchanges are now moving in the opposite direction, bringing stocks, indexes and commodities onto their platforms through perpetual futures, or perps. Market executives have called this the "reverse bridge."
Bitget said the shift has changed the composition of its business. "A year ago, we didn't even have a perpetual stock product; 100% of our volume came from crypto," said Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, in an interview with CoinDesk. "A year later, we now have about 28% of our total trading volume coming from the stock business, and those are mainly stock perpetuals."
Shunyet Jan, an executive overseeing trading market structure at Binance, said traditional exchanges are now adopting products and trading hours first used by crypto platforms. "The innovation of perps started in the crypto world," Jan said. "But then it could also migrate over to TradFi."
