DRW founder and CEO Don Wilson said markets and regulators have broadly misunderstood perpetual futures, arguing that the instruments are, in substance, futures contracts without an expiration date. In his view, features often associated with crypto perpetuals — including high leverage, auto-deleveraging, 24/7 trading and continuous margin settlement — are not inherent to the contract type itself. Instead, he said, those elements reflect product design choices made by crypto trading platforms operating with digital collateral and real-time margin systems.
Wilson also argued that the main innovation of perpetual contracts is that traders do not need to repeatedly roll positions from one maturity to the next. That structure, he said, can lower trading costs while reducing market impact and rollover slippage, allowing positions to track the front end of the futures curve more closely. Addressing the U.S. regulatory debate over whether perpetuals should be treated as futures or swaps, Wilson said classification should rest on economic substance, not solely on the absence of a maturity date. He also called for broader use of perpetual futures across commodities, securities and crypto markets for price discovery and risk management.
DRW founder and CEO Don Wilson said the market and regulators have broadly misunderstood perpetual futures, arguing that the contracts are essentially futures without an expiration date.
Wilson said features such as high leverage, auto-deleveraging, 24/7 trading and continuous margin settlement are not inherent characteristics of perpetual contracts. He described them instead as product mechanisms designed by crypto trading platforms around digital collateral and real-time margin calculation.
According to Wilson, the core innovation of perpetual contracts is that investors do not need to repeatedly roll positions from one contract month to the next. He said that can reduce trading costs, cut market impact and lower rollover slippage, while keeping positions closer to the front end of the futures curve.
On the U.S. regulatory debate over whether perpetual contracts should be classified as futures or swaps, Wilson said the question should be judged on economic substance. In his view, perpetual contracts should not be categorized as swaps simply because they lack an expiry date, and their underlying nature remains that of futures.
Wilson also called for broader use of perpetual futures in commodities, securities and crypto asset markets for price discovery and risk management.
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