Crypto Exchanges Clear $250B In Stock Perps As Memory Chips Lead Trading

Crypto exchanges handled roughly $250 billion in equity perpetual futures trading in July, a 17-fold increase from April, as stock-based contracts rapidly expanded across digital asset platforms. CryptoQuant said monthly volume climbed from about $15 billion in April to nearly $250 billion in July, with activity rising another 56% between June and July.

Binance dominated the market with about $193 billion, or 76% of the tracked volume. Technology stocks, particularly memory-chip names such as SanDisk, SK Hynix and Micron, accounted for a large share of the activity.

The sharp increase shows how crypto exchanges are moving beyond traditional digital assets and becoming venues for trading a wider range of financial products.

Unlike conventional stock futures, equity perpetuals do not have an expiry date. Instead, they use periodic funding payments to keep the contract price close to the underlying stock. The structure is widely used in crypto derivatives and is now being applied to traditional equities.

That gives traders the ability to take positions on familiar companies at almost any time, including weekends when traditional stock markets are closed. The 24-hour structure is one of the main attractions of these contracts for crypto-native traders.

However, trading activity is concentrated in a relatively small group of technology-related names. SanDisk was the most heavily traded equity across the platforms tracked by CryptoQuant.

Crypto exchanges are a 24/7 Wall Street terminal.

TradFi equity perps are running at $250B/month, up from $15B in April — a 17x move in 3 months.

Binance owns 76% of flow, but Gate is the breakout: +308% MoM, growing every month since May. pic.twitter.com/O2DIFqZlz1

— CryptoQuant.com (@cryptoquant_com) August 13, 2026

SanDisk accounted for around 57% of equity perpetual volume on HTX, 29% on Gate and 27% on Binance. Other popular contracts included SOXL, a triple-leveraged semiconductor fund, as well as SK Hynix and Micron.

The concentration was particularly strong on Gate. SanDisk and SK Hynix together represented 53% of the exchange’s equity perpetual volume in July. The figures suggest that traders are showing strong interest in companies linked to the semiconductor and artificial intelligence boom.

Binance remains the clear leader in overall activity. It handled approximately $193 billion of the $250 billion July market tracked by CryptoQuant. Gate, however, recorded the fastest growth, with volume rising 308% month over month to about $15 billion. The exchange has increased its activity every month since May.

Decentralised trading venues are showing a somewhat broader mix of products. Their largest markets include equities, commodities and index contracts. Over a 90-day period, SpaceX generated $84.6 billion in volume, ahead of Solana at $77 billion. Bitcoin remained the largest market at $543 billion, followed by Ether at $246 billion.

Non-crypto markets now account for roughly 17% of volume across the ten largest decentralised contracts tracked in the data. This suggests that perpetual platforms are gradually becoming a broader trading layer rather than remaining focused solely on cryptocurrencies.

The trend also follows a rapid increase in pre-IPO contracts. Their volume grew from around $2 million in March to $715 million in May and then to approximately $12 billion in June.

SpaceX was a major example of that demand. Binance processed more than $5.7 billion in SpaceX perpetual contracts on June 12, the day the company listed on Nasdaq at $135 a share. The contract briefly became Binance’s second-most-traded futures product, behind only Bitcoin perpetuals.

The rapid growth of stock perpetuals shows how crypto exchanges are borrowing the market structure of digital asset derivatives to offer access to traditional financial assets. If the trend continues, exchanges could increasingly compete with conventional markets by offering around-the-clock access to stocks, commodities and other instruments.

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