A 27-year-old programmer was staring at the computer screen at the end of the night。

He's not playing games. On the screen is the space page of Hyperliquid, a ETH contract lasting 20 times the leverage, and the bond is his three-month deposit. Because he had made another calculation: it would take about 30 years at Seoul's current house price to buy a normal apartment at his salary level without eating or saving money. But 30 years later he was 57 years old。

He's not alone. He represents a generation。

At the beginning of 2025, more than 162.2 million Koreans held encrypted accounts, accounting for about 32 per cent of the country ' s total population, exceeding the number of holding stock accounts. More than half a million Koreans opened a new encrypted trading account in just a few weeks after the Trump win. An observation of this group is described as follows: young people in Seoul are acting in a centralized, highly leveraged manner, with hundreds of thousands of accounts acting at a crudely synchronized pace, generating market shocks that no single institutional investor can match。

You can say it's a gambling culture, but it's also a sense of despair。

The same story, on the other side of the planet, in different languages。

Lagos, Naila's purchasing power is evaporating at a visible rate. In March 2025, after a sudden devaluation, the chain volume in sub-Saharan Africa jumped to nearly $25 billion a month against the backdrop of a general contraction in other parts of the world. About one third of the adult population in Nigeria owns or uses encrypted currency, the highest rate of global adoption. For many Nigerians, this is not speculation. This is the only way to trust the value in a country where bank accounts are difficult to own。

IN MUMBAI, THE SHARE OF INDIAN BULK PARTICIPATION IN DERIVATIVES MARKETS ROSE SHARPLY FROM 2 PER CENT IN 2018 TO 41 PER CENT IN 2025. THE NUMBER OF TRADING ACCOUNTS JUMPED FROM 36 MILLION TO 154 MILLION WITHIN FIVE YEARS. THE SEBI STUDY OF NEARLY A MILLION INDIVIDUAL STOCK DERIVATIVES TRADERS SHOWS THAT MORE THAN 40 PER CENT OF THEM ARE UNDER 30 YEARS OF AGE, AND MORE THAN THREE QUARTERS OF THEM HAVE AN ANNUAL INCOME OF LESS THAN THE EQUIVALENT OF 50,000 YUAN. THEY USE EXTREMELY LIMITED INCOME BUFFERS TO CONDUCT HIGHLY LEVERAGED TRANSACTIONS, AND ARE UNABLE TO STOP, REGARDLESS OF WHAT REGULATORS WARN。

Seoul, Lagos, Mumbai are also a global microcosm. Contemporary young people are all gathered on the same tool: a lasting contract。

This is not the story of the encryption industry; it is a collective effort driven by structural inequalities and globally leveraged by young people against the inner age。

A genius vision, 30 years waiting

Perpetual Contract, commonly known as Perp, is not an invention of the encryption industry。

In 1993, the Nobel Laureate in Economics, Robert Sheller, officially presented this idea. In his design, it was an end-of-the-art cash settlement tool that had no maturity and could track the long-term value of non-liquid assets, initially designed to hedge against real estate price risks。

But this design came at a time when traditional financial machines were too heavy. Wall Street has built an extremely large system around fixed maturity, bulk settlement and centralized liquidation. The old machine, driven by paper-based documents and layers of intermediaries, naturally excludes the flexibility of never-ending. Sheller's vision has slept in academic journals for more than 20 years, and no one has the power or the motivation to achieve it。

Until 2016, Arthur Hayes of BitMEX introduced the contract into encrypted currency。

Those two years of BitMEX, with a lasting contract, quickly emerged from the margins as the dominant industrialist。

The secret is not the bitcoin per se, but the lasting contract frees the oldest human impulse, with leverage, in the direction. No expiry date, no Greek letters, no extension, no right of movement. There's only one thing left: up or down, how many times。

in a recent report that provoked extensive discussion, Jay Drain, an investment partner, defined the essence of the matter in a single sentence: "Renewing contracts removes all the complexity of options, does not require the choice of options, does not need to manage maturity, and does not need to worry about losing time to eat a judgement in the right direction. It retains only one thing: a pure bet on price rises and falls. The explosive growth of the 0DTE option has demonstrated the magnitude of the demand."

HE CLAIMS THAT THE 0DTE IS ANOTHER EXPLOSIVE SPECIES IN THE UNITED STATES STOCK MARKET - THE ZERO-DAY MATURITY OPTION. IN 2025, THE AVERAGE DAILY TURNOVER OF 0DTE SPX WAS 2.3 MILLION CONTRACTS, AN INCREASE OF 51 PER CENT OVER THE SAME PERIOD, OR 59 PER CENT OF THE TOTAL QUOTA OF 500 OPTIONS. THE BULK ACCOUNTS FOR 50 TO 60 PER CENT OF THIS TRANSACTION。

No need to wait, no need to be complicated, now, give me leverage。

Perp just made this demand extreme。

THE NUMBERS ARE THE MOST HONEST FOOTNOTE OF THIS EVOLUTION. IN 2025, THE TOTAL VOLUME OF CONTRACTS RENEWED BY THE CENTRALIZED EXCHANGE REACHED US$ 86.2 TRILLION, AN INCREASE OF 47 PER CENT OVER THE SAME PERIOD; THE INCREASE IN THE CHAIN-BASED DEX CONTRACTS CONTINUED AT AN ALARMING RATE OF US$ 6.7 TRILLION, AN INCREASE OF 346 PER CENT OVER THE SAME PERIOD. IT NOW ACCOUNTS FOR MORE THAN 70 PER CENT OF ALL CENTRALIZED ENCRYPTED TRANSACTIONS AND ABOUT 78 PER CENT OF ALL ENCRYPTED DERIVATIVES。

The volume of nominal transactions for the renewal of the contract for bitcoin exceeds the volume of spot transactions for bitcoin by about six times。

This market structure, which is the dominant price for derivatives, has never appeared in any of the traditional asset classes, such as gold, crude oil or even standard 500。

DOPAMINE, TRIBES AND PNL: DEALING AS A LIFESTYLE

That crazy spring of 2021 was the starting point for understanding all this。

With colorful interfaces and zero commission slogans, Robinhood has simplified complex financial games into slide games on mobile phones. This product design has hit a historical vacuum in global residential isolation: tens of millions of young people holding government relief and losing traditional games such as sporting events, casinos and bars, and the stock market has become the world ' s largest closed arena。

The diaspora of the Reddit Forum WallStreet Bets discovered the space of hedge funds Melvin Capital, who were madly empty of GME, and then gathered through social media to raise the stock price dozens of times by looking at options, forcing Wall Street's top hedge fund to implode。

THE GME EVENT DECLARED ONE THING TO THE WORLD: THE DIASPORA FOUND ITSELF ABLE TO ADAPT PRICING LOGIC DIRECTLY THROUGH DERIVATIVE LEVERAGE。

BUT GME IS JUST A DETONATING POINT, AND SOMETHING DEEPER IS ALREADY IN SHAPE。

Modern trade App is increasingly designed to be like games: real-time jump numbers, blinking red and green colours, the tone of a deal. This is essentially a high-frequency dopamine system. In the past, transactions required computers and research; now, when the subway, toilets and coffee lined up, a mobile phone could complete a game. When the threshold for the transaction is low enough, it becomes the same sort of fragmentation as short video and handplay。

PNL became a new business card. The profit-making screenshot is proof of "power" and the self-scoffing at the expense of money is a "good faith" social currency. On Discord or X, such real-time financial fluctuations are more powerful than any static view of life. People who buy the same meme coin form a natural community of interests, an emotional bond of "rich together" or "zero together" that is much stronger than mere hobby。

Thus, the trade became a daily socialization and lifestyle for a new generation of young people。

And in all the trading tools, the lasting contract is the perfect dopamine carrier。

It does not have the complexity of options, nor the maturities of futures. It has only a warehouse space, only leverage and only visible unrealized gains and losses. It is fully compatible with this generation ' s sense of time. It is not held for three years, not quarterly, but at this moment, tonight, the next two hours。

The derivative instruments designed for risk management in traditional finance are being used by a new generation of diasporas as a weapon of directional gaming. Perp, with its extremely simple design, the "fast, cool, tough" trading rhythm, perfects this demand。

A class barrier hidden for 200 years

However, the term "renewal" is much more than "lower threshold gambling"。

It's breaking an older wall。

For too long, restrictive trading times in traditional stock markets have been a hidden class barrier. Academic research has revealed an amazing fact that, under the so-called "night drift" effect, the disproportionate share of the long-term returns of the United States stock originates outside the normal trading period. The issuance of financial statements and major news usually deliberately avoids opening hours, and the dispersed families are locked in windows nine to five, and can only watch the price go empty at the moment when it opens — a profit that they would have earned — during the closed market period, which has long been divided by institutions with extended time。

THE DATA ARE COLD PROOF OF THIS. IF YOU BUY AND SELL HIGH-FLOATING BULK PET AMCS EVERY DAY FROM 2019 TO 2022, THE PRINCIPAL WILL BE ALMOST ZERO, WITH LOSSES OF UP TO 99.6 PER CENT; BUT IF YOU HOLD THEM ONLY AT NIGHT, THE RETURN WILL BE AS HIGH AS 30,000 PER CENT OVER THE SAME PERIOD。

It's not a story of luck. This is about the unequal structural distribution of the right to information, the right to time and the right to price — an imbalance that has existed for 200 years。

A never-ending contractual platform on the chain is probably the only infrastructure around the globe that can truly break this barrier。

This is no longer theoretical. In March this year, the weekend of the Iran attack caused panic, the doors of the world’s major witness exchange were closed, and the scattered households were only able to screen for anxiety in social media, while Hyperliquid’s contract for the renewal of crude oil was closed at $1 billion within 24 hours。

Hyperliquid was popular with a new generation of traders instagram

AT THE SAME TIME, THE INTERCONTINENTAL EXCHANGE (ICE), THE CHICAGO COMMODITY EXCHANGE (CME) AND NASDAQ ANNOUNCED THE LAUNCH OF A 7X24-HOUR ROUND-THE-CLOCK TRADING SERVICE. THE TWO-HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD TRADE WALL WAS BEING DISMANTLED SIMULTANEOUSLY。

RWA Final: Everything can be Perp

In the past, perp traders were betting only on encrypted assets - BTC, ETH, SOL - and a long list of banknotes。

This border is disappearing。

Since the second half of 2025, RWA (real world asset) has emerged in reverse, despite the overall encryption market entering its lower cycle. Many DEXs have introduced bulk commodity, stock and equity contracts, and tradable assets have expanded to NVIDIA, Samsung, SpaceX, and large commodities such as silver and gold。

In the recent past, RWA assets have been short-lived at 44 per cent of the total trade volume of Hyperliquid and continue to be the highest-yielding counterpart of the Platform. Whenever the traditional market breaks weekends, Hyperliquid’s chain of contracts for the renewal of crude oil becomes the only operating crude oil pricing machine around the globe。

Two reports from Wall Street Journal, Hyperliquid and TradeXYZ

This is an ongoing paradigm shift。

a16z in its latest outlook report clearly states that synthetic products (e.g. durability contracts) provide deeper mobility and are more encrypted original RWA solutions than simple tokenization. In essence, it's a historical choice for "renewal contract vs. monetization" and the answer is emerging。

Coinbase is more direct: as the long-term trend of global diaspora participation in US equity continues, a stock-for-life contract is expected to be the preferred tool for a new generation of retail traders, with a combination of 7x24 hours of access and capital efficiency。

Capital already smells in this direction。

On 28 April 2026, the encryption derivative platform Liquid announced the completion of the $18 million A round of financing, which was co-sponsored by Neo and Left Lane Capital, with the participation of Haun Ventures, K5 Global and SV Angel. Prior to this, the company had completed a $7.6 million seed ship, which was awarded by Paradigm, with a cumulative total of $25.6 million。

Liquid was created by former Two Sigma quantitative researcher, Harvard graduate Franklin Wang. He's 25 years old this year. Initially, the company was a conglomerate of lasting contracts that integrated the derivative exchange along the Hyperliquid, Lighter, Ostium and others into the same interface. Today, it has expanded to include equities, foreign exchange, bulk commodities and forecast markets, supporting more than 500 trade points, where Polymucket ' s warehouse position can also be traded up to 200 times。

There are hundreds of millions of young people around the globe who are waiting for a simple enough tool to keep the world on track with minimal friction。

And the best people in traditional finance are heading towards Perp。

The chain will never get dark

In April 2026, the Chairman of the CFTC, Michael Selig, announced in a public address that the regulator would establish a complete regulatory framework for a sustainable contract "near" in the United States mainland。

“THE PREVIOUS GOVERNMENT FAILED TO CREATE A PATH FOR THESE MARKETS TO EXIST IN THE COUNTRY.” UNDER MY LEADERSHIP, THE CFTC WILL USE ALL AVAILABLE TOOLS TO BRING SUSTAINABLE CONTRACTS AND OTHER NEW DERIVATIVES TO SHORE SO THAT THEY CAN FLOURISH IN CENTRALIZED AND DECENTRALISED MARKETS.”

This is almost a public declaration of war。

The global exchange has begun to run. The Kraken parent company purchased Bitnomial, which holds the status of a permanent contract, at $550 billion; Coinbase launched a long-term future product near the design of a permanent contract; Robinhod announced that he was introducing a perp for American users; Polymarket and Kalshi declared successively that they would enter the area of a permanent contract. Even predicting the market, Robinhood, the product line traded 11 billion contracts throughout 2025, with over a million active users -- the fastest growing revenue line in the history of the platform。

until then, the main market for perp was the offshore platform outside the united states, where young people gathered in seoul, lagos, mumbai, hanoi, são paulo, to bet on the direction of the world with the leverage of a devaluation of the dollar。

The formal opening of the United States market means that the world ' s deepest liquidity pool will meet on the same stage as the most engaged financial instrument of the time。

A chain trading platform created in 2022, Hyperliquid, today ' s daily trade volume has been able to challenge the top global centralization exchange. A sustainable contract polymer, Liquid, which came on line only in August 2025, processed $3 billion in transaction volumes within eight months and just completed the A round of financing that was carried out by top-risk capital institutions。

THEY ALL BUILT ON THE SAME THING: Z DIDN'T WANT TO WAIT FOR THE MARKET TO OPEN, DIDN'T WANT TO FILL OUT THE OPENING DOCUMENTS, DIDN'T WANT TO PAY FOR THE LAYERS OF OBSTACLES THAT TRADITIONAL FINANCE HAD SET TO “PROTECT” THEM. WHAT THEY WANT IS FOR THE MOMENT, FOR LEVERAGE, FOR ANYTHING THAT HAS A STORY。

In New York, at the end of the eighteenth century, anyone could be stockbrokers, with no quotes or a fixed place to trade, usually under a tree on Wall Street, a concentration point, where brokers and traders would buy and sell stocks and government bonds, and the time for doing so would be "everyone's time." It's dark, it's broken, the deal stopped。

Today, this tree has grown on the chain and it will never be dark。