Bitcoin exploded past $125,000 in 2025 and a big source of the demand came from one of the most technical corners of the crypto industry: decentralized exchanges (DEXes), or venues run autonomously on code where traders can buy and sell digital assets, and where one of the most popular products are perpetual futures or “perps.” Vlad Novakovski, the founder of the popular DEX Lighter, explained why perps and the exchanges they trade on have grown in popularity in the latest episode of Fortune’s Crypto Playbook podcast, available on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
While retail traders mostly purchase spot crypto, or the current price of digital prices, the go-to investment product on DEXes is often perpetual futures, which track the future price of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. The contracts resemble traditional options but with the twist that the contracts don’t expire and can be bought with an outsize amount of leverage. That means that traders can borrow massive amounts of money to hold positions, which means big gains when their bets pay off—and catastrophic losses when they don’t.
In October, Bitcoin suffered a flash crash, largely due to highly leveraged positions on perps, causing its price to dip below $85,000 and billions of dollars in losses. Bitcoin’s price has since climbed back to almost $100,000, but the market remains muted compared to last year. Novakovski said that he’s optimistic about crypto’s prospects in 2026. “Time needs to pass for that to flush out,” Novakovski told Fortune. “But I think the macro story, to me, is this unlock of regulatory clarity that’s going to happen in the U.S.”
“To me, that’s going to open up the biggest financial market to these technologies,” he added.
Entrepreneurs like Novakovski—alongside Jeff Yan, the founder of the most popular DEX, Hyperliquid—argue that their decentralized exchanges won’t only be used to trade crypto assets, but soon tokenized versions of everything from fiat currency rates to public and private stock holdings. “Hopefully we’ll see this year institutions actually starting to trade perps in some meaningful way,” Novakovski said. “And then we’ll be closer to DeFi and TradFi converging.”
Also on this week’s episode: Eric Adams’s disastrous crypto launch, insider trading on prediction markets like Polymarket, and Bitcoin tipping on Rumble. Tune in!