What to know about 'perps,' the popular crypto-powered trade expanding across markets

The perps are coming.

That's not shorthand for criminals. We're talking about perpetual futures, a once-obscure crypto-linked play that could soon expand across markets.

Perpetual futures have been in the zeitgeist lately. Along with "tokenization," perps are seen as a structural engine for 24/7 trading, something that regulators and finance pros have advocated for recently.

The model has been championed by crypto proponents for a long time, but there's a growing push to bring perpetual futures to other markets, including indexes, single stocks, and commodities.

"The bigger question isn't whether perp futures are coming to traditional assets," stated Jordan Knecht, head of strategic integrations at blockchain infrastructure firm Kresus. "It's what happens next."

What are perpetual futures?

Perpetual futures are a type of derivate contract that allows investors to bet on an asset's price without owning it directly. But unlike normal futures contracts, perps have no expiration date and can be held as long as an investor meets any margin requirements set by their brokerage. The contracts were launched by offshore exchange platform BitMEX in 2016 as a way for traders to speculate on bitcoin.