🤯$1.2 TRILLION?! Crypto Futures Go Wild!

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DEX perpetual futures volumes surpassed $1.2 trillion monthly in 2025, driven by leverage demand, liquidations, and evolving DeFi integration.

So, apparently, people were shuffling around a rather alarming amount of digital money in 2025. $1.2 trillion monthly, you say? That’s… a lot of zeroes. It seems everyone decided they needed to borrow money to buy more money, which, as any economist will tell you (after a long nap and a strong cup of tea), is always a good idea. 🙄 Crypto derivatives activity, predictably, went bonkers, mostly thanks to these decentralized perpetual futures markets. The spot market? Oh, it was having a quiet little sit-down in the corner, feeling rather overlooked.

DEX Perpetual Futures Dominate Crypto Derivatives Growth

According to some people at Coinbase Institutional (who, one suspects, are rather pleased with all this activity), perpetual futures were the main reason for the general hoopla. Decentralized platforms managed to process more than $1.2 trillion every month by the end of 2025. A company called Hyperliquid managed to snag a significant chunk of this burgeoning market – probably building a very large digital castle with all the fees. 🏰

– David Duong🛡️ (@DavidDuong)

The report suggests this is a sign of “gradual mainstream acceptance.” Which is one way of putting it. It’s more like the financial equivalent of letting a slightly unhinged robot drive the bus. High-throughput platforms meant more people could join the fun (or, more accurately, the potential for instant financial ruin). Access barriers decreased, the report states, as though those barriers were ever particularly substantial to begin with. Turns out people were attracted to the possibility of making even more money, even if their original money wasn’t doing particularly well. Who knew?

Related Reading: Aggregators Take Over Solana DEX Volume as Jupiter Leads with 93.6

In the complete absence of a proper altcoin season (which, frankly, is getting a bit of a reputation for being consistently absent), traders started using these “perps” to leverage up. It’s like borrowing a magnifying glass to start a fire – potentially brilliant, potentially disastrous. Speculative positioning went up across the board. Apparently, in mid-2025, Coinbase discovered that people were doing this a lot. Shocking, really. 😲

Purely speculative exposure reached a rather optimistic ten percent. Which, let’s be clear, is still a worrying amount of blindly optimistic bets. This did not include people trying to protect their investments, it was just straight-up gambling. However, a little hiccup in October involved a lot of liquidations – which, to be fair, are a perfectly natural feature of the system.📉 Platforms didn’t collapse, so everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief and decided it was all a good learning experience.

Equity Perpetual Futures May Bridge Crypto and Traditional Markets

Coinbase Institutional (still pleased, presumably) pointed out that perpetual futures aren’t just about trading. They’re acting as “composable primitives” of DeFi. Which sounds remarkably like jargon, but apparently means they’re starting to fit together with other things. Integration with lending protocols and various liquidity strategies improved capital efficiency… somehow. It is a mystery really.

Now you can use these futures for all sorts of complex strategies in the DeFi ecosystems. Hedging liquidity pool exposure, supporting interest rate products, being used as collateral… it’s all getting frightfully complicated. It’s essentially turning finance into an elaborate game of digital Jenga. 🧱

This composability allegedly allows people to hedge risk and earn passive yield. Which is a lovely thought, until the whole tower collapses. Derivatives are becoming more part of wider financial strategies, which, one suspects, means they are getting more people to blame when things inevitably go wrong. This evolution… well, let’s just say it’s something.

Looking ahead, equity perpetual futures are the next big thing, apparently. More and more retail investors are showing an interest in US equities, and tokenized equities might disrupt traditional access. Combining the efficiency of crypto derivatives with the demand for equities? It sounds mad, but then again, so is most of this. 🤔

These equity perps would offer 24/7 access to stocks, leverage, and less friction than traditional brokers. Retail traders get new opportunities outside normal market hours. The report argues this could connect crypto and traditional assets! Quite a brave notion!

Overall, 2025 marked a turning point for decentralized derivatives. Volumes soared, leverage matured, integration deepened. Future is now. Or something like that.

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2025-12-30 06:34