Crypto derivatives have converged with Wall Street. Equity perps could soon prove it.

The line separating crypto derivatives from traditional finance has all but dissolved, and the two markets are now so intertwined that perpetuals, once a purely crypto instrument, could soon be as much a stock trading product as a crypto one.

That's the core takeaway from the panel “Digital Asset Derivatives: Building Ecosystems and Establishing Opportunities” at Consensus 2026 in Miami this week. Krista Lynch, senior vice president of ETF Capital Markets at Grayscale; Mike Harvey, head of Franchise trading at Galaxy and Griffin Sears, head of derivatives at FalconX – three executives from different market lanes – all converged on that same point, with the case grounded in working infrastructure rather than hype or vision.

Harvey made a bold expression of where that convergence leads. "There has been a lot of talk about tokenized equities, and within the next two or three years, the volume of offshore traded equity perps will be greater than crypto perps," Harvey said.

Perps, a short for perpetual futures, are a type of derivative widely used in crypto markets, especially on offshore unregulated exchanges. They are similar to traditional futures, but with one key difference: they don't have an expiration date. As the name suggests, you can hold the perpetual contract forever.

By early 2026, derivatives made up more than 70% of global crypto trading, led by perpetual futures. Monthly volumes regularly reach into trillions of dollars. While perpetuals linked to traditional assets like oil, equity indices, and single stocks have seen a pickup in interest on platforms like Hyperliquid and Binance, particularly during periods of geopolitical volatility, their share of total activity remains limited.

Harvey expects this segment to become dominant in the coming years. His point is that the necessary infrastructure to bring equities to blockchain rails is already in place, and it doesn't care what asset sits on or trades on top of it. Daily operations at Galaxy underscore that reality.

"As dealers, we're the glue that holds those markets together. We have to have the ability to move natively between an offshore exchange, an onshore exchange, futures, ETFs," he said.

In other words, the boundaries between different markets and venues have been operationally dissolved, and what remains is for volume to follow.

The regulatory groundwork facilitating convergence is more advanced than most market participants realize, Regular clarity has been the single biggest driver, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission's generic listing standards, which she said drew formal attention to the link between derivatives and spot ETF eligibility, Lynch said.

"Having a derivative on an underlying crypto token is kind of indicative that it should also be available in the spot format," she added. The standards establish three paths for a protocol to become ETF-eligible in spot form, two of which run directly through derivatives. One requires a futures market that has been in existence and under a regulator's surveillance for a defined period. The other, which Lynch acknowledged, is a "little bit hairier," allows spot eligibility if an ETF already delivers meaningful exposure to an underlying asset through swaps or similar instruments.