Perpetual futures could become crypto's next ETF moment

The rollout of regulated perpetual futures in the U.S. could follow a familiar path to the one taken by spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in seeking mass adoption.

That's according to a Kraken executive overseeing the exchange's global derivatives business, who said sophisticated traders are likely to be the first institutional users of the newly approved products, while larger asset managers and investment advisers will take longer to enter the market.

"When I think about those participants in trading, typically the first movers are going to be the ones that are more sophisticated in nature," John Palmer, head of derivatives at Kraken, said in an interview. "So they're either already connected to exchanges and trading themselves in a proprietary manner."

The comments come as the U.S. derivatives market prepares for the arrival of regulated "true" perpetual futures, a product that has long dominated offshore crypto trading venues such as Hyperliquid (HYPE). Perpetual futures, or perps, allow traders to maintain leveraged positions without an expiration date, unlike traditional futures contracts that must eventually be rolled into a new contract.

Globally, perpetual futures account for the vast majority of crypto derivatives volume, yet U.S. traders have historically had limited access due to regulatory restrictions.

Kraken recently entered the U.S. regulated derivatives market through its acquisitions of NinjaTrader and Bitnomial, giving it access to futures commission merchant, exchange and clearing licenses regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The company expects to launch perpetual futures on Kraken Pro in the coming weeks.

Palmer said broader institutional adoption will likely take time, drawing a comparison to the launch of spot bitcoin ETFs in January 2024.

"When you take further steps back in the asset management chain, then you have investment committees. There could be more additional governance, depending on the entity type," he said. "Those will typically require them to move a little bit slower."

He added that this was the "same thing we saw with the bitcoin ETFs. We saw retail, we saw sophisticated customers really enter that market very quickly, and then we slowly started to see investment advisors, asset managers enter the space in a trailing fashion because they had to go through their own due diligence and their own corporate governance structures."

"I think we will see the same thing for perps," he said.