Futures

Contracts to trade an asset at a future price, often with no expiry in crypto.

Trading & Markets Also called perpetual, perps, perpetual swap, futures contract

Crypto’s dominant derivative is the perpetual swap, a futures contract with no settlement date that tracks spot price through a periodic funding payment.

Perpetuals allow leveraged long and short exposure without holding the underlying asset, and their volume routinely exceeds spot trading by a wide margin.

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