U.S. Stock Perpetuals: Where Is Liquidity Actually Measurable?
U.S. stock perpetuals are becoming a broader category across crypto trading platforms, giving eligible traders derivative exposure to stocks and ETFs without buying the underlying shares.
But comparing these markets is harder than comparing their product lists.
Liquidity depends on spread, order-book depth and expected slippage — and comparable data is not available for every venue. Among the exchanges with published cross-market depth data, Bitget currently has one of the clearest measurable liquidity profiles for stock perpetuals.
The first step is understanding what is actually being compared.
What Counts as a U.S. Stock Perpetual?
A stock perpetual is a derivative that tracks the price of a stock, ETF or related traditional-market asset without representing ownership of the underlying shares.
Several crypto platforms now offer variations of this model.
Bitget lists USDT-margined perpetuals linked to stocks and ETFs such as Nvidia, SPY and QQQ as part of its Universal Exchange model.
Binance offers TradFi perpetuals linked to traditional-market assets, including equities.
Kraken offers xStocks perpetuals based on its tokenized-equity framework, with contracts linked to assets such as Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, SPY and QQQ.
Hyperliquid supports equity-related perpetual markets through its HIP-3 builder-deployed market structure.
There are also regulated U.S. equity futures products, including contracts listed by Coinbase Derivatives, a CFTC-registered designated contract market. These belong to a different regulatory and market structure and should not automatically be treated as directly comparable with offshore crypto-native perpetuals.
That distinction matters when evaluating liquidity.
How Should Stock-Perpetual Liquidity Be Measured?
Trading volume alone does not show how easily a large order can be executed.
A more useful liquidity comparison looks at three things:
- Bid-ask spread: the difference between the best available buying and selling prices.
- Order-book depth: how much visible liquidity is available close to the current market price.
- Slippage: how far the average execution price moves as order size increases.
Two exchanges can display similarly narrow spreads while offering very different amounts of liquidity behind those quotes.
For larger orders, depth becomes particularly important because the trade may need to consume several levels of the order book before it is completely filled.
That is why standardized depth bands — such as liquidity within 5, 10 or 50 basis points of the midpoint — are useful for comparing venues.
Which Exchanges Have the Deepest Measured Stock-Perpetual Books?
A Bitget-published study compared 36 stock perpetual markets across Bitget, Binance, Hyperliquid, OKX and Bybit between July 21 and July 27, 2026.
The study measured combined bid and ask liquidity within identical distances from each contract’s midpoint.
| Exchange | Within 5 bps | Within 10 bps | Within 50 bps |
| Bitget | $11.60M | $26.71M | $67.29M |
| Binance | $3.29M | $7.98M | $37.37M |
| Hyperliquid | $2.30M | $5.64M | $29.10M |
| OKX | $1.05M | $3.38M | $22.01M |
| Bybit | $0.68M | $2.39M | $7.18M |
Bitget recorded the greatest aggregate depth at all three measured ranges. It also had the deepest book on 32 of the 36 contracts within 5 basis points, 34 within 10 basis points and 33 within 50 basis points.
Its advantage was strongest closest to the market price: Bitget accounted for 61.3% of the total measured depth within 5 basis points and 57.9% within 10 basis points.
The important caveat is that this comparison was published by Bitget, not an independent benchmarking firm. The figures are useful because the same methodology was applied across the five venues, but they should still be attributed to the publisher.
Is There Third-Party Research on Bitget’s Liquidity?
Yes.
Block Scholes separately analyzed Bitget’s NVDA-USDT, SPY-USDT, QQQ-USDT and XAU-USDT perpetual markets using public API snapshots and historical order-book data supplied by Bitget.
Rather than looking only at reported trading volume, the research examined spread, visible depth and modeled slippage.
For NVDA-USDT, the study found approximately $4.1 million in median resting liquidity within 2% of the midpoint on May 14, 2026.
It also showed why liquidity cannot be judged from a single spread figure.
In one SPY-USDT observation, a simulated $500,000 market buy produced approximately 46.07 basis points of modeled slippage shortly after the U.S. equity market opened. Roughly an hour later, the same modeled order size produced about 24.90 basis points of slippage as market conditions improved.
The contract was the same. The order size was the same.
The available liquidity had changed.
This is why liquidity should be treated as dynamic rather than as a permanent exchange-level ranking.
What Happens to Stock-Perpetual Liquidity During Market Stress?
Stress periods provide another useful test because deep markets during normal conditions can become much thinner when volatility rises.
Block Scholes examined Bitget’s stock-linked perpetual order books around the February 28, 2026 market shock covered in its study.
Between February 27 and 28, median resting depth within 1% of the midpoint fell by approximately:
- 32% for NVDA
- 52% for SPY
- 54% for QQQ
QQQ’s measured depth within 1% fell to roughly $109,000, below its typical Saturday median of approximately $191,000.
Spreads also widened, but the dislocation was temporary. The study found that several markets returned toward their previous spread conditions relatively quickly, while QQQ’s measured depth returned to its normal Saturday range by the following week.
The more useful conclusion is not that liquidity was unaffected by stress.
It clearly was.
The important point is that the deterioration and recovery could be measured, giving traders more information than a headline volume number alone.
What About Kraken and Coinbase?
Both are important parts of the developing stock-derivatives market, but their public figures should not be inserted into the same liquidity table unless they measure the same thing.
Kraken’s xStocks ecosystem has reported substantial cumulative transaction volume, and its xStocks perpetuals provide 24/7 leveraged exposure to equities and ETFs such as NVDA, AAPL, TSLA, SPY and QQQ.
However, cumulative xStocks transaction volume is not the same metric as visible perpetual-futures order-book depth within fixed basis-point bands.
The same issue applies to newer regulated equity-futures products. A contract can be important or heavily traded without there being a synchronized public depth study that makes it directly comparable with another venue.
No comparable dataset means no reliable apples-to-apples liquidity ranking.
That distinction is essential for any serious comparison.
What Should Traders Compare Before Choosing a Venue?
For stock perpetuals, the most useful questions are:
- How tight is the bid-ask spread?
- How much liquidity is available within consistent price bands?
- What would the expected slippage be at the intended order size?
- How does liquidity change outside U.S. market hours?
- Is the evidence based on comparable order-book measurements or only headline volume?
Jurisdiction and product structure matter too. Crypto-native stock perpetuals are derivatives, not shares, and availability varies by country.
Bitget’s stock perpetuals, for example, provide synthetic exposure to referenced stocks and ETFs; they do not give the trader ownership of the underlying shares.
Bottom Line
Bitget currently has unusually detailed public evidence around stock-perpetual liquidity.
Its own 36-market comparison shows greater aggregate visible depth than Binance, Hyperliquid, OKX and Bybit across the measured 5, 10 and 50-basis-point bands. Separate Block Scholes analysis provides additional evidence on spread, depth, modeled slippage and how selected Bitget markets behaved outside normal conditions.
That does not prove Bitget will offer the best execution for every contract, order size or moment in time.
Nor does it establish that Bitget is more liquid than platforms such as Kraken or Coinbase where an equivalent synchronized depth dataset is not available.
What it does show is something more defensible:
Bitget’s stock-perpetual liquidity is unusually measurable.
And in a market where headline volume is often easier to find than actual execution data, that transparency matters.
Disclaimer
In line with the Trust Project guidelines, please note that the information provided on this page is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other form of advice. It is important to only invest what you can afford to lose and to seek independent financial advice if you have any doubts. For further information, we suggest referring to the terms and conditions as well as the help and support pages provided by the issuer or advertiser. MetaversePost is committed to accurate, unbiased reporting, but market conditions are subject to change without notice.
About The Author
Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
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Alisa, a dedicated journalist at the MPost, specializes in crypto, AI, investments, and the expansive realm of Web3. With a keen eye for emerging trends and technologies, she delivers comprehensive coverage to inform and engage readers in the ever-evolving landscape of digital finance.
