🧭 A $90 trillion perpetual futures contract moves into the US, but banks slow down first

CoinDesk said regulated perpetual futures are rolling out in the US. This product has already formed an estimated $90 trillion trading volume in the crypto market. Now both trading firms and crypto exchanges want to capture retail demand, but traditional Wall Street banks are still waiting for liquidity, rules, and infrastructure to mature.
The first layer is market structure. The appeal of perpetual futures comes from high-frequency trading, leverage, and continuous pricing, but once these features land in a regulated market, they immediately hit margin requirements, risk control, customer suitability, and liquidation arrangements. Exchanges can win users first, while banks care more about who will shoulder settlement and compliance responsibility during extreme market moves as scale grows.
The second layer is the speed gap. Flexible trading firms and crypto exchanges are willing to launch products first, because they’re more accustomed to 24/7 crypto trading and retail traffic. Large banks move slowly—not because they’re bearish on the product, but because they’re waiting for three things: sustainable liquidity, stable regulatory interpretation, and integration with existing clearing and risk control systems.
The third layer is revenue attribution. If regulated perpetual futures in the US truly take off, early revenue may flow first to platforms that already have crypto trading users, matching systems, and risk engines. When banks enter later, their advantages will be with institutional clients, financing capacity, and compliance credit, but they likely won’t capture the earliest retail growth.
There’s also an easy-to-overlook detail: as perpetual futures move from offshore crypto markets into the US regulatory framework, the product names don’t change, but the sources of customers, the margin system, and risk control responsibilities will be reorganized.
The validation points come down to three areas: trading volume and open interest scale of US regulated perpetual products, whether banks begin connecting to clearing or market-making, and whether regulation is explicit about leverage, margin, and customer access rules. Before the data comes in, this is just product migration; once the volume runs, it will enter the phase where Wall Street redistributes derivatives revenue again.
Source: CoinDesk.
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