Arthur Hayes has never been shy about making bold calls, and his latest thesis is as explosive as anything he has written before. In his view, crypto is no longer a side show or a speculative fringe; it is the core technology that will either force traditional finance to evolve or render it obsolete. In that future, Hayes argues, one product will symbolise the shift more than any other: equity perpetuals, or equity perps, becoming 2026’s hottest play.
Arthur Hayes Equity talks about markets, people listen. As co-founder of BitMEX and a long-time observer of macroeconomics, he understands how leverage, liquidity and incentives shape behaviour. His argument is simple but powerful. Traditional markets are constrained by legacy infrastructure, limited trading hours and layers of costly intermediaries. Crypto derivatives and perpetual swaps proved that you can run a deep, highly liquid market 24/7 on a neutral digital rail. The next logical step is to apply that same model to equities.
In other words, instead of trading shares of Apple or Nvidia on a venue that shuts down at 4 p.m. and pauses on weekends, traders could gain exposure to those names through on-chain equity perps that trade around the clock. These instruments live on crypto rails, settle in stablecoins or native tokens, and plug seamlessly into DeFi infrastructure such as lending markets, options protocols and structured products. For Hayes, this is the moment where TradFi either integrates with crypto rails or watches liquidity leak out into a parallel system.
This article dives deep into the thinking behind “Arthur Hayes: Crypto Forces TradFi to Adapt or Die With Equity Perps Becoming 2026’s Hottest Play.” We will explore why his views matter, how equity perps work, why they could dominate 2026, what risks they carry and how traders and investors might navigate this emerging landscape.
Who Is Arthur Hayes and Why His Views Matter
From Derivatives Pioneer to Macro Crypto Voice
Arthur Hayes rose to prominence as the co-founder and CEO of BitMEX, one of the first major exchanges to popularise Bitcoin perpetual swaps. That single product changed the market structure of crypto forever. Instead of waiting for quarterly futures expiry or dealing with complex roll mechanics, traders could maintain synthetic long or short positions indefinitely, using funding rates to keep the contract anchored to spot.
That experience gave Hayes unique insight into how leveraged derivatives and continuous markets behave when they are unconstrained by traditional infrastructure. Since leaving BitMEX’s day-to-day operations, he has become one of the crypto industry’s most influential macro commentators, publishing essays that blend monetary theory, geopolitics and market structure. When he turns his attention to equity perps, he is effectively applying the same logic that made perpetual swaps a breakthrough in crypto to the much larger world of stocks.
Hayes’ Core Thesis: Crypto Versus TradFi
At the heart of Hayes’ thesis is a simple tension: crypto markets are software-driven, global and permissionless, while TradFi is rule-driven, national and permissioned. Traditional exchanges operate during fixed hours. Settlement cycles still reference archaic standards like T+2. Access is filtered by brokers, custodians and clearing houses. By contrast, on-chain markets operate 24/7, settle at the speed of blocks and allow anyone with an internet connection and a wallet to participate.
Hayes believes that as more financial instruments migrate onto crypto rails, the structural advantages of this new system will become impossible to ignore. When you can trade tokenized equities, equity perpetuals and crypto index perps from anywhere in the world, the limitations of traditional stock exchanges start to look like a tax on innovation. From his perspective, crypto forces TradFi to adapt or die because liquidity will naturally gravitate towards the most efficient rails.
Crypto Forces TradFi to Adapt or Die
Structural Weaknesses of Traditional Finance
Traditional finance grew up around physical certificates, paper ledgers and geographically bounded jurisdictions. Over time, that history turned into a complicated web of regulations, clearing rules and fragmented venues. The result is a system that appears sophisticated but still carries unnecessary friction. Markets close on weekends even though risk does not. Settlement layers are siloed, making cross-border flows slow and expensive. Retail investors are often the last in line for access to advanced instruments.
In such an environment, crypto looks less like a rival asset class and more like a superior infrastructure. Stablecoins can move across borders in seconds. DeFi protocols can settle trades on-chain with transparent rules and auditable reserves. Crypto derivatives can adjust funding rates every eight hours, keeping markets in balance without needing a central clearinghouse. For Hayes, these contrasts are not cosmetic; they are existential. If traditional institutions refuse to modernise and plug into these rails, they risk being bypassed altogether.
How On-Chain Markets Change Expectations
Once traders grow accustomed to 24/7 markets, instant settlement and programmable liquidity, it becomes difficult to return to a system that shuts down overnight. Crypto has already reset expectations for how fast a trade should clear and what kind of access is possible. Perpetual swaps, liquid staking, on-chain collateral and composable strategies have demonstrated that entirely new financial primitives can exist when infrastructure is open and digital.
Equity perps take that logic one step further. Instead of asking investors to choose between “crypto” and “stocks,” they allow traders to express equity views through crypto-native instruments. That means traders can long or short big names using the same margin, portfolio and risk tools they already use for Bitcoin or Ethereum perps. As liquidity grows, Hayes argues, this blended environment will set a higher standard for all markets, pressuring TradFi to upgrade or risk losing relevance.
What Are Equity Perpetuals?
From Futures to Perps: The Design Shift
To understand why equity perps matter, it helps to step back and look at how perpetual swaps changed the game in crypto. Traditional futures have expiry dates. As that date approaches, futures prices converge with spot, forcing traders to roll positions into new contracts if they want to maintain exposure. This creates friction, slippage and complexity, especially for high-frequency or leveraged strategies.
Perpetual swaps removed the expiry date. Instead of converging at a fixed time, they use a funding rate paid between longs and shorts. If the perp trades above spot, longs pay shorts; if it trades below, shorts pay longs. This dynamic pulls the contract price back toward spot without needing expiry.
Equity perps apply the same mechanism to stocks or stock indices. Instead of owning the underlying share, the trader holds a synthetic position that tracks its price through a perpetual derivative. Exposure is continuous. There is no constant rolling. The contract can be margined and settled in crypto or stablecoins, making it easy to integrate with existing crypto trading strategies.
How Equity Perps Differ from Tokenized Stocks and CFDs
Equity perps are not the only way to gain synthetic exposure to equities, but they are structurally distinct from tokenized stocks, contracts for difference (CFDs) and traditional equity futures. Tokenized stocks typically aim to represent a claim on actual shares held by a custodian. CFDs are bilateral agreements with a broker, often opaque and heavily regulated at the retail level. Equity futures trade on established exchanges with set expiries and central clearing.
By contrast, equity perpetuals are built as continuous instruments. They may reference off-chain prices through oracles, or they may be structured as total return swaps against a basket of underlying exposures. They live on crypto exchanges or on-chain venues, share margin pools with other crypto derivatives, and plug into DeFi lending and borrowing platforms. This makes them far more composable than most TradFi alternatives, which is exactly why Hayes sees them as the product that could define 2026.
Why Equity Perps Could Be 2026’s Hottest Play
24/7 Equity Exposure Without Settlement Friction
The first major advantage of equity perps is simple: continuous, global access. Traditional stock markets shut their doors at the end of local trading hours and remain closed on weekends and holidays. Yet macro events, political shocks and corporate news can emerge at any time. Traders often have to wait until Monday to express a view, by which time the opportunity may have vanished.
With equity perps, markets do not sleep. A trader in Asia can react instantly to news coming out of the United States. A portfolio manager in Europe can hedge a position on a Sunday night ahead of a high-risk event on Monday. This kind of always-on exposure is already standard in crypto. Extending it to global equities is a natural evolution that aligns with Hayes’ view of crypto forcing TradFi to adapt or die.
Capital Efficiency and Cross-Margin Benefits
Equity perps also shine when it comes to capital efficiency. Instead of maintaining separate margin accounts for different asset classes, traders can use a single pool of collateral, often denominated in stablecoins, to back positions in Bitcoin perps, Ethereum perps and equity perps simultaneously. This cross-margin setup allows sophisticated strategies such as long tech stocks and short crypto beta, long equities and short indices, or complex basis trades that bridge both worlds.
Arthur Hayes Equity institutional players, this is a significant draw. Hedging equity exposure using crypto derivatives becomes more practical when everything plugs into a unified margin system. Hayes anticipates that as more capital flows into these instruments, liquidity will deepen, spreads will tighten and professional traders will treat equity perps as a standard tool in their arsenal.
Bridging DeFi and TradFi Liquidity
Perhaps the most important aspect of equity perps is their role as a bridge between DeFi and TradFi. When equity exposure is represented in a crypto-native format, it becomes easy to integrate with on-chain lending, yield strategies, structured products and automated market makers. Instead of being locked inside a brokerage account, the exposure can be used as collateral in smart contracts or combined with yield-bearing stablecoins.
This composability is central to Hayes’ thesis. If traders can earn yield, borrow against positions, stake liquidity and access options or structured notes, all using equity perps on crypto rails, they may have little incentive to return to siloed traditional platforms. The more this ecosystem matures, the more pressure mounts on traditional equity venues to modernise.
Risks, Challenges and the Battle for Control
Regulatory Uncertainty and Jurisdictional Tension
None of this is guaranteed. Equity perps sit at the intersection of securities law, derivatives regulation and emerging crypto frameworks. Regulators in different jurisdictions may disagree on whether these products should be treated as securities, swaps or something else entirely. Some may welcome innovation under clear licensing regimes, while others may seek to restrict retail access or demand heavy oversight.
For Hayes, this regulatory tension is part of the larger story of TradFi versus crypto. Incumbent institutions and regulators may resist products that route around legacy infrastructure, especially when those products reference traditional assets like stocks. How this battle plays out will shape where equity perps flourish first and which exchanges or jurisdictions become hubs for this activity.
Counterparty, Oracle and Liquidation Risks
From a market-structure perspective, equity perps also introduce significant risk vectors. On centralized venues, traders face counterparty risk to the exchange itself. On decentralized platforms, smart contract security and protocol design become critical. If price oracles are manipulated or fail, the entire system for perpetual swaps can break down, leading to unfair liquidations or distorted prices.
Leverage is another key issue. Because equity perps will likely offer margin trading, the potential for cascades of liquidations rises during volatile events. Traders accustomed to spot stocks may underestimate how quickly a leveraged synthetic instrument can move. Hayes knows these dynamics well from the history of crypto perps, and his vision implicitly assumes that both exchanges and traders will mature in their risk management practices.
TradFi’s Strategic Responses
Traditional institutions are unlikely to sit still while this transition unfolds. Some may try to launch their own crypto-style derivatives in regulated environments, offering equity perps or similar instruments under strict oversight. Others may seek to partner with existing crypto exchanges, providing liquidity, market-making or underlying index data in exchange for access to new revenue streams.
There is also the possibility of walled gardens, where large banks build private blockchains or permissioned networks that mimic some features of public crypto systems without offering true openness. Hayes tends to be sceptical of such approaches, arguing that the full power of crypto comes from openness and global liquidity, not controlled replicas. In his vision, the winning rails are those that deliver genuine composability, deep liquidity and user sovereignty.
Strategies for Traders and Investors Eyeing Equity Perps
Thesis-Driven Positioning Around Macro and Tech
For traders who share Hayes’ conviction that equity perps will become a major theme by 2026, the first step is building a thesis around which sectors and names are most likely to attract liquidity. Technology, artificial intelligence, chip manufacturers, energy transition plays and leading consumer brands are all candidates, since they already dominate traditional equity volumes.
Equity perps could allow traders to blend macro crypto themes with classic equity narratives. Someone bullish on artificial intelligence, for example, might pair long AI-related equity perps with long positions in infrastructure tokens. Another trader might express a stagflation view with short equity perps and long hard-asset-linked crypto. The key is to think of equity perps not as isolated instruments, but as part of a broader cross-asset, cross-margin universe.
Risk Management in a Perpetual World
Risk management remains central. Because perpetual swaps and equity perps trade without expiry, it can be tempting to treat them as simple spot substitutes. In reality, funding rates, leverage and liquidation rules create a very different risk profile. Traders need to understand how funding can eat into returns, how quickly margin can be called, and how overnight or weekend moves in thin markets can trigger large swings.
Hayes would likely emphasize that in a world where crypto forces TradFi to adapt or die, the winners are those who respect volatility while exploiting structural advantages. That means controlling position size, diversifying collateral, understanding protocol design and staying informed about regulatory shifts that may affect access to these products.
What to Watch as 2026 Approaches
Looking toward 2026, several milestones will signal whether equity perps are on track to become the year’s hottest play. Market participants can watch for major exchanges listing marquee equity names as perps, increasing open interest and volume, new DeFi protocols integrating equity perps into lending and structured products, and institutional commentary acknowledging these instruments as meaningful hedging or trading tools.
As these pieces fall into place, the narrative “Arthur Hayes: Crypto Forces TradFi to Adapt or Die With Equity Perps Becoming 2026’s Hottest Play” may shift from provocative headline to accurate description of how traders actually operate day to day.
The Future: Convergence of Crypto Rails and Equity Markets
In the long run, Hayes’ thesis points toward a world where crypto rails and equity markets are no longer distinct categories. Instead, they become layers of the same global financial stack. Some assets may always remain within tightly regulated silos, but much of the trading, hedging and liquidity provision could occur on open, programmable infrastructure powered by blockchains and smart contracts.
Equity perps are not the final destination, but they are a powerful stepping stone. They translate one of TradFi’s most familiar instruments, the equity exposure, into a pure crypto-native format. Once that translation becomes liquid, composable and trusted, the boundaries between “crypto” and “stocks” begin to blur. That is the world Arthur Hayes is pointing toward: a world where TradFi either plugs into this new stack or watches as its monopoly over capital flows dissolves.
Conclusion
Arthur Hayes has once again staked out a bold position, arguing that crypto forces TradFi to adapt or die, and that equity perps are poised to become 2026’s hottest play. His vision is rooted in decades of market structure evolution, from physical certificates to high-frequency trading and now to on-chain finance.
Equity perps encapsulate everything that makes crypto compelling: 24/7 markets, global access, composability, capital efficiency and programmable settlement. They offer traders a way to express equity views on crypto rails, combining familiar stock narratives with the speed and flexibility of crypto derivatives. At the same time, they raise serious questions about regulation, risk and the future role of traditional exchanges.
Whether or not every detail of Hayes’ thesis plays out exactly as he describes, the direction of travel is clear. Markets are becoming more digital, more open and more global. In that world, instruments like equity perps are not just speculative toys; they are the natural evolution of how capital will be allocated and hedged. As 2026 approaches, investors, traders and institutions will increasingly have to decide where they stand: clinging to old rails, or embracing the crypto-driven future that Hayes believes is inevitable.
FAQs
Q: Who is Arthur Hayes and why do his views on equity perps matter?
Arthur Hayes is the co-founder of BitMEX and a key figure in the development of crypto derivatives, especially perpetual swaps. His experience building one of the most influential derivatives platforms in crypto gives him deep insight into market structure, leverage and liquidity. When he argues that equity perps will be 2026’s hottest play and that crypto forces TradFi to adapt or die, many market participants take his analysis seriously as a roadmap for where innovation is headed.
Q: What exactly are equity perpetuals and how do they work?
Equity perpetuals, or equity perps, are derivatives that offer continuous exposure to the price of a stock or equity index without an expiry date. Like crypto perpetual swaps, they use a funding rate mechanism between long and short positions to keep the contract price close to the underlying reference price. Traders can hold positions indefinitely, use leverage and settle in crypto or stablecoins, all while gaining synthetic exposure to traditional equities on crypto rails.
Q: Why does Arthur Hayes believe equity perps could dominate 2026?
Hayes believes equity perps will dominate 2026 because they combine the best of both worlds. They bring familiar equity exposure into a crypto-native environment that offers 24/7 trading, improved capital efficiency and seamless integration with DeFi. As more exchanges list equity perps and more liquidity flows into these markets, he expects traders to favour them over legacy structures that are slower, less flexible and constrained by limited trading hours.
Q: What are the main risks associated with trading equity perps?
Trading equity perps carries several risks. These include leverage risk, where positions can be liquidated quickly during sharp price moves, as well as funding rate risk, which can erode returns over time. There are also counterparty or smart contract risks, depending on whether the instrument is offered on a centralized or decentralized platform. In addition, regulatory changes could affect access to or the legal treatment of equity perpetuals, especially where they intersect with securities laws.
Q: How might TradFi respond if equity perps gain major traction by 2026?
If equity perps gain the kind of traction Hayes expects, traditional finance is likely to respond in several ways. Some institutions may launch their own regulated versions of equity perps or similar derivatives. Others may partner with crypto exchanges or build infrastructure that bridges on-chain and off-chain markets. A more defensive response could involve lobbying for tighter rules on unregulated platforms. Ultimately, Hayes’ argument is that crypto’s advantages will force TradFi either to integrate these innovations into their own offerings or risk losing liquidity and relevance as traders migrate to more efficient rails.
