But that has not been how it actually works for years as far as bitcoin, ether and the broader crypto markets are concerned. “Historically, we have seen perps leading mostly during bear market price rallies,” Julio Moreno, head of research at CryptoQuant, told CoinDesk. “In these periods, spot demand was contracting, while perps demand expanded, thus the perpetual futures market was leading prices despite demand contracting on the spot market,” he said. The first mover was Hyperliquid, the onchain derivatives exchange, where a synthetic SpaceX perpetual went live on May 18. Binance opened its own SpaceX market on May 21, Coinbase followed on June 4, and BitMEX, Bitget and OKX later added contracts of their own.