Imagine it’s Saturday afternoon. You’re relaxing, scrolling through your phone, when major news breaks about a company you’ve invested in. If you’re a crypto trader, you can react instantly. You can buy, sell, or adjust your position in seconds. But if you’re a traditional stock investor, you have to wait. You watch the news unfold, feeling powerless until the opening bell rings on Monday morning. By then, the market has already priced in the news, often with a jarring gap up or down. This disconnect between a 24/7 world and a 9-to-5 market is something Arthur Hayes, the outspoken co-founder of BitMEX, believes is about to change forever.
In a recent bold prediction, Hayes argued that the very heart of the stock market, a process called price discovery, is set to migrate away from traditional exchanges like the NYSE and Nasdaq. Where is it going? To the always-on, hyper-liquid world of crypto perpetual futures markets. It's a provocative idea, suggesting that the future of trading stocks might not even happen on a stock exchange.
For those not deep in the crypto world, the term “perpetual futures” or “perps” might sound like jargon. Let's quickly break it down. In traditional finance, a futures contract is an agreement to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price on a specific date in the future. These contracts have an expiration date.
Crypto perpetuals are a clever twist on this concept. They are like futures contracts but with one crucial difference: they never expire. You can hold a position for as long as you want. This design, combined with a mechanism called a funding rate that keeps the contract’s price tethered to the underlying asset’s spot price, has made them wildly popular. They allow traders to use leverage and speculate on price movements without the hassle of managing expiration dates.
Most importantly, they trade 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The crypto market never sleeps, and neither do its most popular trading instruments.
Arthur Hayes’ argument centers on the inefficiency of legacy financial markets. The world doesn’t stop moving when the stock market closes at 4:00 PM in New York. Geopolitical events happen, companies release unexpected statements, and economic data is published around the clock. Yet, the primary markets for trading equities are closed for more than 16 hours each weekday, plus the entire weekend.
This creates a few major problems:
Hayes believes this system is an outdated relic. In an age of instant global communication, why should our financial markets operate on a timetable from the last century?
Here is the core of Hayes' prediction. He envisions a future where the most liquid and important stocks, think Apple, Tesla, or NVIDIA, are represented as perpetual futures on crypto exchanges. When that happens, traders will naturally flock to the market that is always open. Why wait until Monday morning to trade on news that broke Saturday, when you can do it instantly on a 24/7 platform?
“The most important stock indices will have listed perpetuals on offshore crypto exchanges,” Hayes explained. “This is where the true price discovery will happen.”
According to him, the price of a stock on the NYSE would simply follow the price being set in real-time on the 24/7 perpetuals market. The traditional exchange would become a follower, not a leader. It would be relegated to simply settling the final price at the end of its short trading day, while the real action happens elsewhere. This would represent a seismic shift in the balance of power in global finance.
Of course, there's a huge hurdle to overcome before this vision can become a reality: regulation. Currently, listing a security like a stock, or a derivative tied to it, on a crypto exchange for US investors would attract the full attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). And historically, the SEC has been very cautious about crypto’s intersection with traditional securities.However, Hayes is optimistic that this is changing. He points to a potential softening of the regulatory stance, suggesting that as the crypto industry matures and engages more with lawmakers, a more favorable framework will emerge. He argues that the overwhelming efficiency and demand for 24/7 markets will eventually push regulators to approve these products.
Once the regulatory doors are open, Hayes believes traditional financial giants will rush to participate. They won’t want to be left behind as their own products become less relevant. They will partner with or build their own crypto exchanges to offer these stock perps, further accelerating the trend.
If Arthur Hayes is right, the implications are massive. Traditional stock exchanges would face an existential threat, forced to either adapt by offering 24/7 trading themselves or risk becoming obsolete. For traders and investors, it would mean unprecedented access and the ability to react to news in real time, no matter when it happens. It would also likely lead to a more continuous, less gappy market, though volatility would become a constant, 24/7 phenomenon.
This isn't just a fantasy. The technology is already here. Crypto perpetuals handle billions of dollars in volume every single day. The model is proven. The only missing piece is the regulatory bridge to connect the world's biggest companies to the world's most dynamic trading infrastructure. For Arthur Hayes, it is not a matter of if, but when that bridge will be built.
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