Arthur Hayes: It is expected that price discovery for the largest U.S. tech stocks will occur in the perpetual contract market

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes stated, "Traditional finance (TradFi) is desperately trying to maintain its dominance in stock trading. It will be very interesting to observe how they respond to the rapid market acceptance of index perpetual contracts. The first market to dominate the perpetual contract space will be offshore trading of U.S. stock price risk.

U.S. stocks, along with all stocks, will eventually be tokenized. However, index perpetual contracts can succeed without relying on stock tokenization. There is already a mature infrastructure for stock perpetual contracts that can scale quickly. Currently, the daily trading volume of index perpetual contracts has exceeded $100 million. As traders and market makers become familiar with the contract specifications, the trading volume will soon reach billions of dollars daily. Considering that there are often sudden global announcements after the TradFi market closes every Friday, index perpetual contracts will become a tool for institutional and retail traders to hedge risks over the weekend. This will force major U.S. securities trading platforms to implement 24/7 trading faster than originally planned.

I predict that by the end of 2026, price discovery for the largest U.S. tech stocks and major indices (such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100) will occur in the retail-focused perpetual contract market. When financial media displays the S&P 500 perpetual contract quotes as the best pricing source, rather than the CME's Globex version."