$25 billion in equity perpetual futures was executed at crypto exchanges in July... memory and semiconductors shook the market

The trading volume of equity perpetual futures handled by cryptocurrency exchanges is reported to have reached about $250 billion (about KRW 345 trillion) over the month of July. Rising 17-fold in just three months from roughly $15 billion in April, some major exchanges appear to be transforming into de facto “24-hour stock markets.”
Key contents
The trading volume of equity perpetual futures on centralized crypto exchanges, from about $15 billion in April,
It surged to about $25 billion in July.
Binance absorbed about $193 billion of this and recorded a 76% market share.
Gate grew the fastest, up 308% from the previous month.
Trading has concentrated in semiconductor and memory stocks, including SanDisk, making market skewing particularly noticeable.
CryptoQuant analyzes expanded listings of traditional assets… stock perpetual futures explode
On August 13, CryptoQuant, an on-chain and derivatives data analytics firm, released these figures through a report that focused specifically on traditional financial products traded on digital asset exchanges.
According to the report, the monthly trading value for stock perpetual futures surged from about $15 billion in April to nearly $250 billion in July. The growth rate between June and July alone reached 56%.
**Binance** processed about $193 billion out of all trades in July, recording a 76% market share based on exchange data tracked by CryptoQuant. **Gate** had the fastest growth rate at 308% from the previous month, with monthly trading increasing every month since May, reaching about $15 billion in July. This is comparable to the total market size in April. Gate’s growth follows updates emphasizing AI-based stock-picking and the expansion of traditional finance (TradFi) futures.
Related article: Bitcoin faces increasing risk of large-scale selling after weak U.S. demand for 90 days
Trading skew toward SanDisk and semiconductor stocks… ‘AI memory’ leads the market
Stock perpetual futures have no expiration, and the structure involves exchanging a regular funding rate (Funding Rate) to narrow the gap with the spot price of the underlying asset (individual stocks or ETFs). Thanks to this design established in crypto derivatives, exchanges can list and trade traditional stocks 24/7. However, actual trading is concentrated on only a very small number of tech stocks.
According to CryptoQuant data, **SanDisk (SanDisk)** was the most actively traded stock among the exchanges analyzed. By exchange, SanDisk accounted for about 57% of HTX’s stock perpetual futures trading, 29% at Gate, and 27% at Binance.
Trading also focused on semiconductor and memory stocks such as SOXL, a 3x leveraged semiconductor ETF, along with SK Hynix and Micron. This created a structure in which the AI memory value chain dominated most of the market.
Looking only at Gate, the two stocks SanDisk and SK Hynix in the previous month accounted for a combined 53% of stock perpetual futures trading. By contrast, on decentralized derivative platforms, trading is more spread out: not only stocks but also commodities and index-linked products have been consistently appearing across the top 10 markets over the past 90 days.
During this period, SpaceX-related perpetual futures totaled $84.6 billion and surpassed Solana (SOL)’s $77 billion. Even so, across the overall market, Bitcoin (BTC) ranked first by far at $543 billion, followed by Ethereum (ETH) at $246 billion.
The “pre-IPO” perpetual futures created a ‘stock boom’ backdrop
Exchanges have steadily expanded their listing rosters, which had previously been crypto-focused, and have increased the share of non-crypto assets. According to CryptoQuant, among the top 10 decentralized perpetual futures, non-crypto assets (stocks, commodities, indexes, etc.) currently account for about 17%. The report concludes that perpetual futures platforms are evolving into a “universal trading layer that encompasses a wider range of liquid assets.”
This surge in stock perpetual futures this week is a phenomenon following the perpetual-futures rally related to the immediately preceding ‘pre-IPO (pre-listing unlisted)’ theme. The trading volume of pre-IPO perpetual futures rose sharply from about $2 million in March to $715 million in May and to about $12 billion in June.
In particular, on June 12, Binance processed more than $5.7 billion worth of SpaceX perpetual futures on the day SpaceX was listed on the **Nasdaq** at an offering price of $135—marking the largest IPO in history. For a brief period, the product also ranked as the second most traded derivative on Binance after bitcoin perpetual futures.
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