A year after crypto’s historic crash, leveraged trading has yet to regain its old swagger. But the appetite for outsize bets hasn’t disappeared. Increasingly, the machinery that made crypto notorious for speculation is being turned on stocks, commodities and other traditional assets rather than just digital tokens.
New data from Talos show the shift. Across five major trading venues, total open interest in perpetual futures — a gauge of outstanding speculative positions — has fallen to about $67 billion from $81 billion over the past year. Yet open interest in contracts tied to so-called real-world assets has gone from virtually nothing to $9 billion, claiming 14% of the total across those venues.
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