Institutional Digital Asset Derivatives Markets

While early crypto exchanges offered various types of margin and futures products, today's digital asset derivative market is primarily dominated by perpetual contracts. These are derivative contracts that never expire and do not need to be rolled over from month to month to keep the position.

Pioneered by BitMEX in 2016, the perpetual market has seen a number of new launches across non-regulated pure-play crypto exchanges that offer various forms of leverage, collateral, and liquidation mechanisms. The perpetual swap market continues to be the most liquid product to gain exposure to digital assets.