W Group, the ecosystem behind crypto exchange WhiteBIT, has invested in derivatives provider SwapGlobal. The October 23 announcement disclosed no deal value and said the company’s first pre-IPO transactions were being prepared.
TL;DR: SwapGlobal is preparing institutional pre-IPO derivatives with backing from W Group. The planned exposure would convey a contractual payoff, without ownership of shares.
WhiteBIT names Marcel Boekhoorn and Amsterdam’s Kenzoll Capital as fellow backers. Funding will add trading and working capital for the expansion beyond crypto. Foreign equities, computing power and digital assets are further ambitions.
Exposure Without A Shareholding
SwapGlobal says it would hedge institutional client positions and use qualified custodians for collateral. Hedge funds and asset managers are among the intended customers.
The arrangement changes what a client is buying. A contractual payoff linked to a company’s value does not itself put the client on the company’s shareholder register. Voting rights, direct ownership and the ability to transfer actual shares cannot be assumed from a product described as pre-IPO exposure.
It also gives the contractual terms particular importance. A private company can remain unlisted longer than expected, making the handling of valuation changes, maturity and settlement central to evaluating a transaction. The announcement provides a business direction rather than the detailed terms of a completed deal.
For example, a contract’s treatment of an eventual listing would need to be understood alongside its treatment of continued private ownership. Those two outcomes can create different settlement questions. The label attached to the exposure does not answer them.
An Institutional Derivatives Model
SwapGlobal’s website describes an over-the-counter model offering swaps, forwards, perpetual forwards and options through a single counterparty relationship and ISDA documentation. Clients can access the service through an interface or an API. The company says its services are limited to Eligible Contract Participants under U.S. rules.
The website also describes initial margin as a fraction of a trade’s notional value, followed by daily variation margin. That means an institution’s liquidity needs can change after it enters a position. Access to an otherwise difficult-to-trade asset still comes with the mechanics of a margined derivative.
The intended custody arrangements address where collateral is held, while the contract determines how the exposure settles. Those are separate parts of the transaction to assess alongside the provider’s ability to hedge its obligations. More capital at the provider does not remove the need to examine the terms of an individual position.
For a group rooted in Bitcoin and broader crypto trading, the investment extends its interest into institutional access to private assets. Completed transactions with identifiable terms would be the next evidence of how the proposed model works beyond the funding announcement.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
TL;DR: CME reported record third-quarter revenue of about $1.74 billion on October 21. The results provide a fresh look at a major crypto-derivatives operator, but they do not separately identify crypto revenue or its contribution to the increase.
CME Group’s third-quarter revenue rose approximately 13% from a year earlier, as the exchange operator reported a record Q3 for revenue and average daily trading volume.
The company’s October 21 earnings release shows revenue of $1.7373 billion, compared with $1.5376 billion a year earlier. Average daily volume was approximately 29.4 million contracts, while market-data revenue reached $243 million.
Those are company-wide figures. They span CME’s markets and should not be presented as measurements of cryptocurrency trading alone.
Crypto Expansion Sits Inside A Much Larger Business
CME has been broadening its digital-asset offering. In a September 22 product announcement, it scheduled Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures for October 19, subject to regulatory review, with both standard and Micro contract sizes.
That earlier release also reported first-half crypto futures and options average daily volume of 279,800 contracts, representing $8.3 billion in notional value. Those figures belong to the first half of 2026, not the quarter covered by Wednesday’s earnings announcement.
Keeping the periods separate is essential. The product announcement explains the direction of CME’s crypto strategy; the latest earnings show the performance of the broader operator. One cannot be used to manufacture a crypto-specific growth rate that the other does not disclose.
More Trading Does Not Reveal Market Direction
For an exchange, activity can rise when participants disagree sharply about prices or need to adjust hedges. A higher contract count does not establish that traders are collectively betting on a rise in the underlying asset.
Contract counts also need care when comparing products. A Micro contract and a larger contract represent different exposures, so growth in the number traded is not interchangeable with growth in notional value.
The new results show a larger revenue base and heavy use of CME’s overall markets. They give context to its expanding role in regulated crypto derivatives, while leaving the precise contribution of that business unanswered in the release reviewed here.
TL;DR: KuCoin announced five new USDT-margined perpetual contracts for October 21, including products tracking Goldman Sachs shares and the leveraged MSTU ETF. The contracts offer up to 20x leverage in supported markets.
KuCoin is extending its derivatives menu further into traditional financial assets with five contracts scheduled for launch on Wednesday.
The exchange’s official listing notice names URNMUSDT, GSUSDT, MSTUUSDT, FWDIUSDT and USDEXUSDT. It sets a 09:00 UTC October 21 start and advertises leverage of up to 20 times, subject to regional availability.
Although KuCoin groups the products under a stock-index label, the disclosed references include individual companies and exchange-traded funds. They cover the Sprott Uranium Miners ETF, Goldman Sachs, the T-Rex 2X Long MSTR Daily Target ETF, Forward Industries and StablecoinX.
Price Exposure Without Share Ownership
A perpetual contract provides exposure to movements in its reference price. Buying one does not mean acquiring the underlying share or fund unit, and the economic result depends on the derivative’s own terms.
That distinction becomes particularly important for MSTU. The reference fund itself targets leveraged daily exposure to Strategy shares. A leveraged contract tracking that fund adds another layer of sensitivity; it is not equivalent to simply holding a conventional unleveraged stock position.
The 20x figure is an advertised maximum for the contracts, not a description of the risk every account will necessarily take. Position size, margin, liquidation rules and changes in the underlying price determine the exposure of an individual trade.
KuCoin lists round-the-clock trading and funding settlements every eight hours for the five contracts. That creates a calendar mismatch: the derivatives can remain active when the reference securities’ home markets are closed. The reference-price methodology matters particularly during those gaps.
Wednesday’s notice establishes the planned product additions and their stated specifications. It does not establish the depth of their order books or demonstrate that a large position could be entered and exited at a quoted price.
The practical expansion is access to more equity-linked exposures through USDT-margined contracts, with the risks of both the reference asset and the derivatives structure attached.
Kalshi is doubling down on its bid to become the regulated U.S. home for crypto perpetual futures, pairing a new bitcoin-backed lending arrangement with digital-asset custodian BitGo alongside a distribution deal that will put its perpetual contracts in front of Webull’s more than 6 million customers.
Bloomberg first reported Wednesday that customers of Kalshi Prime, the company’s U.S.-registered futures commission merchant, will be able to borrow against digital assets held at BitGo and use the proceeds to fund margin positions on perpetual futures traded on Kalshi’s main exchange.
Under the tri-party structure, loans will be issued by Kalshi Katalyst, a lending affiliate of Kalshi Prime, and secured against assets held at BitGo Bank & Trust, the firm’s federally chartered trust bank.
Eligible collateral will include bitcoin, ethereum and stablecoins deemed compliant with the GENIUS Act, with additional custodians expected to join Kalshi’s network over time.
Prime CEO Jeff Bandman told the outlet the product was designed with crypto-native traders in mind, including those already active on unregulated offshore perpetuals venues and large holders who would rather not sell their bitcoin to fund futures positions.
He also pointed to unexpected demand from businesses, such as Latin American firms that run their operations on U.S. dollar stablecoins.
The move targets a segment where the company has acknowledged a structural disadvantage against Polymarket, its offshore, blockchain-based rival, which has long catered to crypto whales and trading firms that prefer to keep their capital in digital assets. The two platforms have been racing to build out perpetuals since the spring.
Webull debuting crypto-linked perpetual futures via Kalshi rails
The BitGo arrangement landed a day after Webull announced Tuesday that eligible U.S. customers will be able to trade perpetual futures on its platform beginning in November, starting with bitcoin and a handful of other crypto assets.
The contracts will trade on KalshiEX LLC, Kalshi’s CFTC-regulated designated contract market, and clear through Kalshi Klear LLC, its derivatives clearing organization. Access will initially be limited to customers already approved for futures trading through existing Webull Futures accounts, with broader availability expected before year-end.
Webull Group President and U.S. CEO Anthony Denier said in the company’s release that perpetual futures saw more than $90 trillion in global volume in 2025 and that American investors should be able to access them through a regulated platform.
These two announcements extend a product buildout for the company, which secured CFTC clearance for the first U.S.-regulated bitcoin perpetual in late May and went live with the contract in early June, before adding gold and silver perpetuals in September and a US500 stock index perpetual earlier this month.
The expansion comes amid mounting state-level legal pressure, with Utah becoming the latest state to sue Kalshi on Monday over what it alleges is illegal sports gambling, following New York’s similar action against Polymarket last month.
CME Group has scheduled the introduction of Bitcoin Cash and Uniswap futures for October 19, giving institutional derivatives traders two more cryptocurrency markets to access through a regulated venue.
TL;DR: CME previously announced BCH and UNI futures for an October 19 launch, subject to regulatory review. Standard and micro contracts are planned for both assets.
The exchange first disclosed the expansion on September 22. That timing matters: this is the scheduled start of an already announced product, not a surprise decision taken this morning. CME lists standard Bitcoin Cash contracts of 250 BCH and micro contracts of 25 BCH. For Uniswap, the respective sizes are 10,000 UNI and 1,000 UNI.
These contracts are designed to let market participants manage price exposure without arranging custody of the underlying tokens. That suits trading firms and institutions that already use futures as part of a wider portfolio or hedging operation. It also gives two assets outside the largest cryptocurrencies another route into institutional market infrastructure.
Uniswap is a particularly interesting addition because its token sits in the decentralized-finance sector. The existence of a listed futures contract does not itself establish demand for a future exchange-traded fund, nor should a derivatives launch be treated as evidence that regulators have approved any spot ETF.
CME says the planned additions respond to customer demand for risk-management tools. The exchange’s crypto product range already extends beyond Bitcoin and Ether, and the new contracts continue that approach.
The remaining detail traders should watch is the exchange’s confirmation of regulatory clearance and live trading. A published target date is not the same as confirmation that every contract has begun trading.
Written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Crypto.com Exchange has integrated with Insilico Terminal, giving users access to advanced execution tools for spot and derivatives.
Supported tools include TWAP, scale orders, depth-of-market views, automated sizing and programmable hotkeys.
The integration does not change the underlying market risk of leveraged or derivatives trading.
Crypto.com is adding a more professional trading interface without forcing users to move their accounts to another venue.
The exchange announced an integration with Insilico Terminal on October 6, allowing users to connect their Crypto.com Exchange account directly to Insilico’s trading platform.
That gives traders access to execution tools usually associated with specialist terminals while keeping the actual account and liquidity on Crypto.com.
The Upgrade Is Mostly About Execution
Insilico supports tools including time-weighted average price orders, scale orders, depth-of-market views, automated sizing, programmable hotkeys and one-click strategies.
Those features matter most to active traders.
A simple market order may be enough for a small position, but larger traders often want to split execution, manage slippage or place orders according to a more structured plan.
The integration effectively separates the exchange from the interface.
Crypto.com provides the account, spot and derivatives markets and settlement infrastructure. Insilico provides a more specialized layer for interacting with them.
Better Tools Do Not Make Leverage Safer
Professional interfaces can improve how a trader executes a strategy.
They do not improve the strategy itself.
That distinction becomes especially important in derivatives, where a sophisticated order type can still lose money quickly if the underlying position is wrong or overleveraged.
The partnership is therefore best understood as infrastructure rather than a promise of better returns.
For Crypto.com, the attraction is clear.
Institutional and high-frequency traders often choose venues based not only on fees and liquidity but also on the quality of APIs and execution tools available around the exchange.
Offering direct access through Insilico gives the platform another way to compete for that flow.
The broader trend is also notable.
Crypto trading is beginning to look more modular, with traders using one venue for liquidity, another piece of software for execution and separate providers for custody or analytics.
Crypto.com and Insilico are leaning into that model rather than assuming every serious trader wants to live entirely inside one exchange interface.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Binance Futures is adding USDT-settled perpetual contracts tracking StablecoinX, Viking Therapeutics, McDonald’s and Akamai.
The contracts trade 24/7 and support leverage of up to 20x.
They are derivatives that track the underlying equities; buyers do not receive the actual shares.
Binance is continuing to blur the line between a crypto derivatives venue and an around-the-clock market for traditional assets.
The exchange announced four new USDT-settled perpetual contracts on October 6 tied to StablecoinX, Viking Therapeutics, McDonald’s and Akamai Technologies.
Each contract can be traded with up to 20x leverage and remains open 24 hours a day.
Stock Exposure Without Stock Ownership
The new contracts track the price of the underlying equities but do not deliver shares.
That is a fundamental distinction.
A trader holding MCDUSDT has leveraged price exposure to McDonald’s stock through a derivative. They are not a McDonald’s shareholder and do not receive the ordinary rights that come with owning the equity.
Binance settles the contracts in USDT and uses a funding-rate mechanism to keep perpetual prices anchored to their reference markets.
The exchange has capped funding at plus or minus 2% per interval for the new products, with funding settled every eight hours.
24/7 Trading Creates Its Own Price Problem
Traditional stock markets close.
Perpetual futures do not.
That means there will be periods when the Binance derivative continues trading while the underlying U.S. equity market is shut.
During those hours, traders are effectively expressing a view on where the stock should trade when the cash market reopens.
That can be useful, particularly around breaking news, but it can also create dislocations.
Leverage magnifies that risk.
A 20x position can be liquidated by a relatively small adverse move, even when the underlying company’s long-term investment case has barely changed.
Binance has been expanding its TradFi perpetual lineup throughout 2026, and the latest four contracts show that the product is becoming a permanent part of the exchange rather than a one-off experiment.
Crypto exchanges built the world’s largest perpetual-futures markets around digital assets.
Now some of that market structure is being applied to stocks, with the same always-on trading culture and the same need for traders to understand what leverage can do when the reference market itself is closed.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
CFTC records show Bitnomial’s “Ondo US Dollar Spot” futures product was certified on October 1.
The filing classifies the contract as a futures product under the financial-instrument category.
Certification is a regulatory product filing status; it should not be described as a broad CFTC endorsement of ONDO or the underlying protocol.
Bitnomial has added another crypto-linked contract to its regulated US derivatives pipeline, this time tied to Ondo.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s designated contract market product database shows “Ondo US Dollar Spot” under Bitnomial, with a futures classification and a certified status dated October 1.
That puts Ondo alongside a growing list of digital assets being wrapped into products on regulated US derivatives venues.
Bitnomial is becoming more important to US crypto market structure
Bitnomial’s role has expanded significantly since Kraken parent Payward acquired the platform and began using its regulated stack for US derivatives products.
The exchange structure matters because US traders historically had far fewer domestic routes into crypto-native derivatives than users on offshore venues.
An Ondo-linked futures contract widens that regulated menu beyond the largest assets.
“Certified” has a specific meaning
The CFTC database lists the contract as certified on October 1.
That should not be turned into a claim that the regulator has evaluated ONDO as a good investment or endorsed the Ondo project. Futures exchanges can self-certify products under the Commodity Exchange Act by representing that the contract complies with applicable rules.
The regulatory status is about the listed derivatives product.
That precision matters in crypto because product approval, asset classification and project legitimacy are often collapsed into one headline even though they are legally different questions.
Bitcoinist has also tracked the increasing overlap between crypto and regulated financial infrastructure through Kraken’s Bitnomial acquisition and other domestic derivatives launches.
More altcoin exposure is moving into regulated wrappers
Bitcoin and Ethereum built the first deep US regulated derivatives markets. The next stage is broadening the asset set.
Every additional contract gives professional traders another way to hedge, express a directional view or arbitrage differences between spot and derivatives markets without leaving a regulated venue.
Whether the Ondo contract attracts meaningful liquidity remains to be seen. Certification opens the door; market makers and traders still have to decide whether the product is worth using.
For now, the important fact is straightforward: Bitnomial has a certified Ondo US dollar futures product on the CFTC’s October 1 list.
—
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Crypto Derivatives Are Now Bigger Than Spot Trading. So Why Are Most Exchanges Still Built Like Spot Exchanges?
For years, the crypto exchange industry was built around a simple model.
List digital assets.
Match buyers and sellers.
Process trades.
Hold customer balances.
Add more trading pairs.
That model made sense when spot trading was the center of the market.
But the market has changed.
Crypto derivatives are no longer a side product sitting next to spot markets. They have become the dominant venue for trading activity, price discovery, leverage, and risk transfer.
According to Cboe, annual crypto derivatives notional volume reached roughly $111.5 trillion in 2025, compared with approximately $25.3 trillion in spot turnover — a derivatives-to-spot ratio of around 4.4 to 1.
More recent exchange data tells a similar story. In June 2026, derivatives represented 84.5% of the combined spot and derivatives trading volume tracked by CoinMarketCap, with roughly $5.44 in derivatives trading for every $1 in spot volume.
The numbers raise an uncomfortable question for exchange operators.
If derivatives have become the dominant layer of crypto trading, why are so many exchanges still designed around a spot-exchange mindset?
Because a derivatives exchange is not simply a spot exchange with leverage added on top.
It is a fundamentally different financial system.
A spot exchange mainly has to answer:
Can the buyer and seller execute the trade?
A derivatives exchange has to answer something much harder:
What happens if the market moves against thousands of leveraged traders at the same time?
That difference changes everything.
The Shift From Asset Trading to Risk Trading
Spot trading is relatively straightforward.
A trader buys Bitcoin.
Another trader sells Bitcoin.
The asset changes hands.
The exchange matches the transaction and manages settlement.
Derivatives introduce an entirely different layer.
Traders may not be buying an asset for immediate ownership.
They may be:
Speculating on future price movements
Hedging an existing position
Trading with leverage
Managing portfolio exposure
Taking short positions
Arbitraging differences between markets
The exchange is no longer simply operating a marketplace for assets.
It is operating infrastructure for risk.
This is why the rapid growth of derivatives matters.
Cboe argues that derivatives have increasingly become a central venue for crypto price discovery and risk transfer as the market develops beyond its earlier retail-led structure.
For businesses considering the exchange market, this creates an important strategic distinction.
Building a spot exchange is primarily about facilitating transactions.
Building a derivatives exchange is about managing what happens before, during, and after risk enters the system.
The Trading Interface Is Not the Exchange
This is where many people underestimate derivatives infrastructure.
The visible part of an exchange is easy to recognize.
A trading chart.
An order form.
A position dashboard.
A wallet.
An order book.
But these are only the surface.
The real complexity exists underneath.
A derivatives platform may need infrastructure capable of continuously managing:
Open positions
Available margin
Unrealized profit and loss
Maintenance margin
Mark prices
Funding rates
Liquidation thresholds
Position limits
Insurance mechanisms
Market exposure
The user sees a button that says Buy Long.
The exchange sees a chain of calculations that must continue operating even when markets become volatile.
That is why copying the architecture of a traditional spot exchange can create serious problems.
A derivatives platform needs to be designed around real-time risk from the beginning.
Not added later as another product category.
When Leverage Grows, Risk Becomes the Product
Leverage is one of the major reasons derivatives attract traders.
A trader can gain greater market exposure with less capital.
But leverage also creates a mathematical problem for the exchange.
The more leverage involved, the smaller the market movement required to threaten a trader’s margin.
Now imagine that process happening across thousands of accounts.
A sudden market movement can trigger:
Margin pressure → Liquidations → Market orders → More price movement → Additional liquidations
This is one of the defining infrastructure challenges of derivatives trading.
LSEG has highlighted how forced liquidations can add liquidity stress precisely during periods of market pressure. Its analysis of digital-asset derivatives also points to the importance of managing default and systemic risk during extreme market conditions.
For an exchange operator, this means the most important technology may not be the matching engine.
It may be the system deciding:
Who needs to be liquidated, when, and how that liquidation can occur without destabilizing the wider market.
That is not a feature.
That is core infrastructure.
A Derivatives Exchange Is Really a Risk Engine With a Marketplace Attached
This may be the most important idea for anyone planning to launch a crypto derivatives platform.
The trading interface attracts the user.
The market attracts the liquidity.
But the risk engine protects the exchange.
A derivatives exchange needs a framework capable of monitoring positions continuously.
That includes determining:
How much collateral supports a position
How much exposure a trader can take
When margin requirements change
When a position approaches liquidation
Which price should be used for risk calculations
How losses are handled if liquidation cannot close a position efficiently
The answer cannot always be based on the last traded price alone.
Markets can be volatile.
Individual trades can occur at unusual prices.
Order books can become thin.
That is why sophisticated derivatives infrastructure typically depends on carefully designed pricing, margin, and risk mechanisms.
The system has to work when markets are normal.
More importantly, it has to work when markets are not.
Liquidity Is Not a Marketing Metric
A new exchange can launch with:
50 trading pairs.
100 contracts.
Advanced charts.
Copy trading.
Trading bots.
Mobile applications.
Promotional campaigns.
And still fail.
Why?
Because traders need to execute.
Liquidity determines whether an exchange can provide:
Tighter spreads
Lower slippage
Faster execution
Greater order-book depth
More reliable liquidations
Recent market data also shows how competitive this challenge has become.
CoinMarketCap’s May 2026 exchange report found that derivatives activity was heavily concentrated, with the five leading venues responsible for more than 88% of tracked derivatives flow.
That creates a difficult reality for new platforms.
The market is not waiting for another exchange simply because the exchange has more features.
A new entrant needs to answer a more difficult question:
Why would traders bring their capital and order flow here?
The answer may involve a specific region, asset category, trading product, institutional market, liquidity partnership, or user segment.
But one thing is clear.
Liquidity cannot be treated as something the exchange will figure out after launch.
It has to be part of the platform strategy.
More Contracts Do Not Automatically Create a Better Exchange
The temptation for new exchanges is obvious.
Add more markets.
Add more leverage.
Add more products.
Add more features.
But product expansion can also create more operational complexity.
Every derivatives market introduces questions around:
Index pricing
Liquidity
Risk exposure
Position limits
Settlement
Market surveillance
Margin requirements
The objective should not be to build the largest possible product catalogue.
It should be to build a market that works.
A smaller exchange with deep liquidity in a carefully selected set of products may create a better trading experience than a platform offering hundreds of thinly traded contracts.
This is particularly important because derivatives markets are increasingly concentrated around leading platforms, even as new categories and products continue to emerge.
The next successful exchange may therefore not be the one that offers everything.
It may be the one that solves one market exceptionally well.
The Real Architecture Begins With What Happens During Stress
Most platforms perform well in normal conditions.
That is not the hardest test.
The real test is what happens when:
Prices move rapidly.
Volatility spikes.
Order books thin out.
APIs receive unusual traffic.
Liquidations accelerate.
Users rush to close positions.
A derivatives exchange must continue processing risk while managing enormous numbers of simultaneous events.
This creates an infrastructure problem involving multiple systems operating together:
Matching Engine
Processes orders efficiently and fairly.
Risk Engine
Monitors margin, exposure, and account-level risk.
Pricing Infrastructure
Maintains reliable market and reference pricing.
Liquidation Engine
Responds when positions no longer meet margin requirements.
Market Surveillance
Monitors abnormal activity and potential manipulation.
Collateral Infrastructure
Tracks balances and available margin.
Insurance and Loss Mechanisms
Helps manage exceptional situations when positions cannot be closed efficiently.
These systems cannot operate as disconnected modules.
They need to communicate in real time.
This is why derivatives exchange architecture deserves to be treated as a financial infrastructure challenge rather than simply a trading-software project.
Why “Add Derivatives Later” Is Becoming a Weak Strategy
For a spot exchange, derivatives may look like a natural next step.
The exchange already has:
Users.
Wallets.
A trading interface.
A matching engine.
Why not add perpetual contracts?
Because derivatives change the nature of the platform.
The introduction of leverage creates:
New risk models.
New pricing requirements.
New liquidation processes.
New collateral considerations.
New compliance obligations.
New operational risks.
The exchange may therefore need to redesign core systems rather than simply add a new trading tab.
Those decisions influence the technology that needs to be built.
The Next Competitive Advantage Could Be Better Risk Management
For years, crypto derivatives competition was often associated with one number:
Maximum leverage.
10x.
25x.
50x.
100x.
But higher leverage does not automatically create a stronger exchange.
It increases the importance of everything happening behind the interface.
Margining.
Liquidation.
Market monitoring.
Capital protection.
Position management.
The next generation of exchanges may therefore compete less on how much leverage they can advertise and more on how intelligently they can manage the risk created by that leverage.
This is where infrastructure becomes a competitive advantage.
The exchange that handles volatility better can create greater confidence.
The exchange that maintains execution during market stress can retain more sophisticated traders.
The exchange that provides reliable pricing and risk controls can build a stronger long-term operating model.
Risk management is no longer simply a defensive function.
It is part of the product.
Institutional Growth Will Raise the Infrastructure Standard
The crypto market is becoming increasingly connected to broader financial infrastructure.
Cboe notes that the growth of crypto exchange-traded products and derivatives has strengthened the relationship between digital-asset markets and traditional financial systems, with regulated derivatives venues becoming increasingly important to institutional participation.
CME Group also reported nearly $3 trillion in cryptocurrency futures and options trading during 2025, alongside substantial growth in average daily volume and open interest.
This matters because institutional participants generally bring different expectations.
They may require:
Reliable APIs
Deeper liquidity
Robust risk controls
High availability
Advanced reporting
Operational transparency
Professional custody and settlement infrastructure
As the market evolves, exchange infrastructure will increasingly be judged against these requirements.
A consumer-style trading app may attract retail users.
But institutional-grade market infrastructure requires a different standard of engineering.
The Exchange Industry Is Moving From Feature Competition to Infrastructure Competition
The numbers suggest that derivatives have already become central to crypto market activity.
But the next stage of competition will not necessarily be about launching more perpetual contracts.
It may be about building better infrastructure around them.
That means competing on:
Execution quality.
Liquidity.
Risk management.
System reliability.
API performance.
Capital efficiency.
Market integrity.
The visible features will still matter.
But infrastructure will increasingly determine whether the business can operate at scale.
The strongest exchanges may eventually become difficult to distinguish by interface alone.
The real difference will be found in the systems traders never see.
The Future of Crypto Derivatives Will Not Be Built Like Spot Trading
Crypto derivatives are already larger than spot markets by trading activity.
But many businesses still approach derivatives development with an outdated assumption:
Build a spot exchange first. Add leverage later.
The market data suggests that approach deserves to be reconsidered.
A derivatives exchange needs to be designed around:
Risk.
Liquidity.
Margin.
Volatility.
Market stress.
The trading screen is important.
But it is not the foundation.
The foundation is the infrastructure underneath it.
Conclusion: The Biggest Exchange Product Is the System Traders Never See
Crypto derivatives have changed the economics of the exchange industry.
The market is no longer centered only on buying and selling digital assets.
It increasingly revolves around managing exposure, leverage, and risk.
That requires a different kind of infrastructure.
The next successful derivatives exchanges will not necessarily win because they offer:
More leverage.
More contracts.
More trading indicators.
More promotional features.
They may win because their systems are better at managing what happens when everyone wants to trade at the same time — and the market moves in the wrong direction.
That is the difference between building a trading interface and building an exchange.
And as crypto derivatives continue to shape the market, the businesses that understand that distinction early may have a significant advantage.
The future of crypto derivatives will not be determined only by what traders see on the screen.
It will be determined by the infrastructure working underneath it.
Bitcoin futures open interest is back above $50 billion for the first time this year. Is that healthy leverage or a warning sign? David Lawant, head of research at Anchorage Digital, says it’s a sign of vitality, and explains why rising spot volume and thinning order books point to the early stages of a Bitcoin market upturn.
Chapters: 0:00 Bitcoin Futures Open Interest Tops $50B – Healthy or a Warning Sign? 1:26 Reading Bitcoin’s Market Structure Beyond Open Interest 3:23 Rising Spot Volume, Thinning Order Books, and the Anthropic IPO 4:15 The Liquidity Absorption Ratio Explained 6:52 How to Spot a Bitcoin Market Regime Change 7:36 The $60B Bitcoin Options Market and the Volatility Curve 8:57 Why Short-Dated Bitcoin Volatility Stayed Elevated in 2026 10:09 What Bitcoin Options Tell You That Price Can’t 11:28 Lessons From Anchorage’s 37,000 Covered Call Backtests 13:29 How ETFs and Treasury Companies Are Changing Price Discovery
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this show are those of the participants and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of BTC Inc., Bitcoin Magazine, or any affiliated entities. This content is provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice. Nothing contained in this show constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or financial instruments. Viewers should consult their own advisors before making financial or business decisions.
Roughly $15.6 billion of Bitcoin options expired on Deribit on September 25.
Bitcoin traded around $83,600 after the settlement, below the week’s near-$87,000 high but still well above its earlier trading range.
XRP and Solana continued outperforming Bitcoin over the week even as the large derivatives expiry passed.
One of the largest Bitcoin options expiries of the year has passed without blowing up the spot market.
Approximately $15.6 billion in BTC options reached settlement on September 25, clearing a huge concentration of derivatives positions while Bitcoin held in the mid-$83,000 range.
The Expiry Removed A Large Block Of Hedging Exposure
Ahead of settlement, the options book represented roughly 182,000 BTC.
Calls substantially outnumbered puts, with about 106,200 BTC of call open interest against roughly 75,900 BTC of puts in the expiry.
Those positions settled through Deribit’s regular expiry process.
Large quarterly expiries matter because options dealers and traders often hedge their exposures in the spot and futures markets.
As expiry approaches, changes in price can force those hedges to be adjusted.
Once the contracts settle, some of those flows disappear.
That does not mean a $15.6 billion expiry translates into $15.6 billion of Bitcoin being bought or sold.
The figure represents the notional value of the options contracts.
Still, removing that much open interest can change short-term market positioning.
Bitcoin Cooled While Some Large Altcoins Kept Running
Bitcoin traded around $83,600 after pulling back from an intraday high near $87,000 earlier in the week.
The move left BTC below its recent peak but still above the range that contained it before the latest breakout.
At the same time, several large altcoins continued to outperform.
XRP was up roughly 15% across seven days, while Solana had gained around 9%.
That divergence suggests the expiry was not producing a broad flight from crypto risk.
Instead, capital was still moving around inside the market even as Bitcoin paused.
Options expiries are often surrounded by dramatic predictions about “max pain” levels or prices being forced toward particular strikes.
The actual market is less deterministic.
Dealer hedging can influence short-term trading, but spot demand, macro conditions, ETF flows and broader positioning continue to matter.
The important development is simply that a very large derivatives event is now behind the market.
With the September quarterly book cleared, Bitcoin’s next move should depend less on traders managing that expiry and more on whether buyers are willing to keep supporting the rally without it.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
KuCoin has listed a MOONSHOTUSDT pre-IPO stock index perpetual linked to Beijing Moonshot AI Technology.
The contract trades 24/7 with up to 20x leverage and settles in USDT.
Traders are buying a synthetic derivative, not Moonshot AI shares or an allocation in a future IPO.
KuCoin is giving traders another way to speculate on a private technology company before it reaches the public market.
The exchange has launched a MOONSHOTUSDT pre-IPO stock index perpetual contract linked to Beijing Moonshot AI Technology, the Chinese artificial-intelligence company behind the Kimi assistant.
Trading opened on September 23 with leverage of up to 20x.
Private-Market Speculation Gets A 24/7 Derivative
The contract settles in USDT and trades continuously.
KuCoin defines one contract as exposure equivalent to 0.1 MOONSHOT under the exchange’s index methodology.
The product also includes an estimated share count of one billion shares, but KuCoin is explicit that the figure is informational and may differ from whatever capital structure exists if Moonshot ultimately completes an IPO.
That caveat matters.
There is no public Moonshot share trading venue providing a conventional spot price around the clock.
Pre-IPO perpetual products instead create a market around expectations of what a private company may eventually be worth.
The contract price can therefore reflect sentiment, liquidity and speculation rather than the value at which actual company shares could be bought or sold.
This Is Not Pre-IPO Equity
A trader opening a MOONSHOTUSDT position does not become a Moonshot shareholder.
There are no voting rights, dividend rights or direct claims on company equity attached to the perpetual contract.
The instrument provides synthetic price exposure through KuCoin’s derivatives market.
That difference becomes particularly important with leverage.
At 20x maximum leverage, relatively small price moves can have a large effect on a trader’s margin and can trigger liquidation long before any eventual public listing takes place.
Crypto exchanges have increasingly turned pre-IPO companies into tradeable themes through perpetual futures.
It is an unusual collision between private markets and the always-open structure of crypto derivatives.
For investors who cannot access private shares directly, that creates a new speculative instrument.
It does not create a new ownership right.
Moonshot AI may eventually go public, but KuCoin traders are wagering on the market’s expectations before that happens — not buying the company ahead of everyone else.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Coinbase has already launched gold and silver perpetual futures for eligible non-US traders.
The company is also moving its regulated US gold and silver futures toward 24/7 availability through Coinbase Derivatives.
The products provide derivatives exposure rather than physical bullion ownership.
Coinbase is extending its “everything exchange” strategy into precious metals, using crypto-style derivatives infrastructure to make gold and silver increasingly available outside traditional market hours.
The company already offers GOLD-PERP and SILVER-PERP contracts to eligible non-US traders and has been working to move its US-regulated commodity futures toward 24/7 trading.
Metals Are Getting Crypto Market Hours
Traditional commodities markets are highly liquid, but they still operate around established exchange schedules.
Crypto traders are used to something different.
Bitcoin and other digital assets trade continuously, including weekends and overnight periods when many conventional markets are closed.
Coinbase’s metals push is an attempt to bring that always-on model to gold and silver price exposure.
For non-US users, perpetual contracts provide continuous leveraged exposure settled in USDC.
For eligible US users, the regulated route runs through Coinbase Derivatives, a CFTC-regulated designated contract market and its participating intermediaries.
Derivatives Are Not Bullion
The product structure needs to stay clear.
Traders are not taking delivery of gold bars or silver coins simply because they trade these contracts.
The instruments provide financial exposure to metal prices.
That means users still face derivatives-specific risks including leverage, margin requirements and liquidation.
Coinbase is also using hybrid index mechanisms to keep commodity perpetual prices aligned during periods when underlying traditional markets are closed.
That is a technical challenge crypto exchanges increasingly need to solve as they move into traditional assets.
The bigger trend is straightforward.
Crypto venues no longer want to be places where users trade only cryptocurrencies.
They want the same account and collateral base to provide exposure to equities, commodities, prediction markets and other assets.
Gold and silver are becoming another test of how far that model can stretch.
Precious metals are also a useful test case for the wider strategy because their reference markets are deep and globally understood. If crypto exchanges can offer reliable around-the-clock derivatives on gold and silver, the same infrastructure can potentially be extended to more commodities and equity-linked products. The challenge is maintaining credible pricing when traditional venues are closed. Coinbase’s use of external and internal reference mechanisms is designed to bridge that gap, but traders still need to understand that weekend liquidity and price discovery can behave differently from the primary futures market.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Bybit has launched Bybit Odds, a product for tracking prediction-market probabilities and sentiment.
The launch campaign includes a 17,000 USDT reward pool.
Bybit Odds is an analytics product integrated into the exchange, not a standalone decentralized prediction-market protocol.
Bybit is moving into prediction markets without launching a new betting chain or standalone venue.
The exchange has introduced Bybit Odds, an analytics product designed to surface probability and sentiment data from prediction markets inside its own trading ecosystem.
Prediction Data Becomes Another Trading Signal
Bybit says the product aggregates real-time odds and presents them through probability visualizations and sentiment tools.
That positions prediction-market data as another input for traders alongside price charts, funding rates and order-book signals.
The launch also includes a 17,000 USDT promotional reward pool for early users.
The interesting part is not the campaign itself.
It is the way prediction markets are increasingly being treated as a data source rather than a separate category of product.
Bybit Odds Is Not A New Decentralized Market
Users should keep the product’s role straight.
Bybit Odds does not create a new blockchain-based prediction market where users mint positions or settle events through a decentralized protocol.
It is an analytics layer integrated into Bybit.
That makes it closer to a market-intelligence feature than a standalone prediction exchange.
Still, the launch says something about where trading platforms think demand is going.
Probability markets are becoming mainstream enough that a major crypto exchange now considers their data worth packaging directly for active traders.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
Bybit has listed SDGRUSDT, a perpetual contract tracking Schrödinger Inc. shares.
The contract offers up to 25x leverage through the exchange’s TradFi perpetual platform.
Holders receive synthetic price exposure rather than physical SDGR shares.
Bybit has added Schrödinger Inc. to its growing list of equities that can be traded through crypto-style perpetual futures.
The new SDGRUSDT contract opened on September 22 with leverage of up to 25x.
A Biotech Stock Enters The Perpetual Market
Schrödinger is a software and drug-discovery company, making the listing a notable extension beyond the crypto-linked and technology names that have dominated many early TradFi perpetual products.
Bybit users can now trade continuous long or short exposure to SDGR through a USDT-settled contract.
That creates a market with different hours and mechanics from the underlying stock.
It also adds leverage and funding-rate dynamics that do not exist when an investor simply buys shares.
Synthetic Exposure Comes With Different Risks
The contract does not deliver physical SDGR stock.
There are no shareholder voting rights and no direct ownership relationship with Schrödinger.
Instead, traders are taking a derivatives position linked to the stock’s price.
That distinction is especially important for investors who may be familiar with equities but less familiar with perpetual futures.
The listing is another sign that crypto exchanges increasingly see themselves as global derivatives venues rather than platforms limited to digital assets.
Bybit’s TradFi desk is now applying the same perpetual structure to a steadily wider set of public-market prices.
This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.
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