3 Stocks Drive Half of August's $665 Billion CEX Perpetual Futures Volume

Stock perpetual futures on centralized crypto exchanges traded $665.42 billion in August, according to WuBlockchain Data Center. 3 underlying names produced more than half of that activity.

The total rose 4.6% from $636.19 billion in July. Still, the figure is 56.5 times higher than January’s $11.58 billion.

Chip Stocks Still Control the Equity Perp Market

SanDisk (SNDK) led all underlying assets in August volume, with $193.58 billion. SK Hynix (SKHYNIX) followed at $75.89 billion, and the SpaceX-tracking SPCX contract added $65.93 billion.

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Together, the three represented 50.4% of the market. That concentration echoes what CryptoQuant documented in July, when memory and semiconductor names dominated exchange flows.

Notably, SNDK perpetual volume equaled 62.4% of the stock’s US spot turnover on August 19, the highest reading on record in WuBlockchain’s tokenized equities data. The ratio eased to 38.0% by August 26.

No other equity-linked perpetual comes close. Circle (CRCL) ranked second at 47.2%, while Nvidia (NVDA) and Meta both sit below 3%.

Exchanges Widen Their Stock Derivatives Lineup

Meanwhile, Binance reported roughly $433.4 billion in traditional finance (TradFi) perpetual volume for August, about 15 times January’s $29.5 billion. Equity-linked contracts generated $342.9 billion of that figure, or close to 79%.

The exchange is now adding options on more than 1,000 US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) for eligible users outside the United States. 

Rivals are moving in parallel. Bybit plans to start 24/7 options trading on September 17, using SpaceX and Nvidia perpetuals as the underlyings.

Whether the market broadens beyond memory chips will determine if September repeats August’s narrow structure.

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