Perpetual futures tracking SanDisk shares reached a record 62.4% of the underlying stock’s U.S. spot-market turnover on August 19, highlighting the rapidly expanding role of crypto-style derivatives in trading traditional equities. Aggregate SNDK perpetual volume across 32 monitored venues reached approximately $16.291 billion during the session, according to WuBlockchain Data’s tokenized-equities dashboard.
SanDisk shares simultaneously generated approximately $26.1 billion of U.S. spot turnover, based on roughly 16.28 million shares traded at an average price of approximately $1,603. That placed perpetual volume at 62.4% of conventional equity turnover, the highest ratio in available data for any equity-linked perpetual tracked by the platform. The comparison does not mean $16.3 billion of tokenized SanDisk stock changed hands. Perpetuals are derivatives that track the stock’s price without giving traders ownership, dividends or voting rights in SanDisk itself.
SNDK Ratio Climbed From 42% to 62.4% in Three Sessions
The August 19 record followed several days of unusually heavy derivatives activity. On August 17, SNDK perpetuals generated approximately $13.40 billion of turnover against $31.94 billion in U.S. spot activity, producing a ratio of 42%. Perpetual turnover then increased to $16.19 billion on August 18 while U.S. spot turnover declined slightly to $30.78 billion, pushing the ratio to 52.6%.
By August 19, perpetual volume remained above $16 billion while spot turnover fell to approximately $26.1 billion, taking the ratio to 62.4%. Activity has subsequently moderated but remains elevated. On August 26, SNDK perpetuals generated approximately $4.98 billion against $13.10 billion in underlying U.S. stock turnover, leaving the ratio at 38%. SNDK also stands well above other equities tracked using the same measure. Circle-linked CRCL reached a peak ratio of 47.2% on August 5, while the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF, SOXL, reached 38.1% on August 6. Strategy’s MSTR peaked around 20% and Micron’s MU around 14.6%. By contrast, perpetual volumes for Nvidia and Meta remained below 3% of their underlying U.S. spot turnover.
Crypto Exchanges Push Equity Perpetuals Into Mainstream Volumes
The SNDK figures demonstrate how quickly equity-linked perpetual futures are expanding beyond their crypto-native origins. Perpetual contracts have no expiration date. Traders instead maintain leveraged exposure through margin and recurring funding payments designed to keep derivative prices close to their reference markets. SNDK contracts are now available across numerous centralized and decentralized venues. Current market data shows Binance accounting for roughly 43% of tracked SNDK perpetual activity, followed by OKX at approximately 24% and Gate.io near 19%. Together, the three venues represent about 87% of current aggregate turnover. On Hyperliquid, SNDK is available through trade.xyz’s HIP-3 market.
The contract is cash-settled in USDC, provides up to 10-times leverage and trades around the clock, including when U.S. equity markets are closed. Traders receive price exposure but do not own SanDisk shares. That structure illustrates why direct comparisons with spot-market turnover require caution. Perpetual contracts can generate substantially more notional turnover than the capital committed because traders use leverage and can repeatedly open and close positions. Their 24/7 availability also gives derivatives markets substantially more trading time than Nasdaq-listed shares. The 62.4% ratio therefore does not indicate that perpetual markets are approaching conventional exchanges in ownership or capital formation.
It does demonstrate that they are becoming meaningful venues for price speculation. SanDisk provides an unusually strong example. On August 19, traders generated more than $16 billion of SNDK-linked perpetual turnover without buying or selling the underlying shares. If similar ratios begin appearing consistently across larger equities, equity perpetuals could evolve from a crypto-market niche into a significant parallel derivatives market operating outside conventional stock-exchange hours. For now, SNDK is the outlier. But its 62.4% record shows that, for individual high-volatility stocks, crypto-native perpetual markets can already generate trading volumes comparable with a substantial fraction of Wall Street’s cash market.