Having spent more than a decade in traditional markets before moving into digital finance, I have seen the same frustration from both sides. Investors may have a strong view, enough money to act on it and the patience to wait, yet the system still makes them choose between earning something on that money, keeping it ready, or using it to support an investment.
We have treated that choice as normal for far too long, even though it quietly imposes two separate costs. The first is the cost of optionality. When money is earning a return, it is often harder to use immediately, while money kept ready for the next opportunity may earn nothing at all. Investors pay for the freedom to act by giving up yield, when they should be able to earn on their money and trade with it at the same time. The second is the cost of holding, and it is especially clear with perpetual trades, which allow crypto investors to keep a position open without a fixed end date. The charge for holding that position can change so much that the original idea eventually matters less than the growing cost. Taking a long-term view with borrowed money should be cheaper and more predictable than that.
Crypto has a real chance to improve this because digital systems can move money and investments quickly between different uses, and the need to do so is becoming more urgent as these markets grow.
For example, CoinGecko found that monthly trading volume in perpetual trades linked to traditional assets rose from $230 million at the start of 2025 to $347billion by May 2026, yet the industry has still spent far more time creating new things to trade than making them easier and more affordable to hold, and that is the wrong priority.
Another area where innovation is needed is in how these markets support people who want to stay invested for longer. Giving people more choice means little when the experience still pushes them towards quick reactions rather than careful, long-term decisions.
The next generation of perpetual markets should spend less time adding more things to trade and more time making the cost of holding those trades easier to understand. If someone plans to keep a position open for weeks or months, they should have a clear idea of what that could eventually cost before they commit their money.
Otherwise, they end up reacting to every short-term change in the running charge instead of asking whether their original investment idea still makes sense. Until that improves, these markets will continue to reward quick reactions far more than genuine long-term conviction.
The next stage of financial innovation should give more people access to more markets while allowing their money to remain useful at every step. Investors should not have to keep moving funds between separate accounts simply to earn something on unused money, stay ready for a new opportunity and maintain an investment they already believe in. Removing that friction is what solving the cost of optionality looks like.
Why Ordinary Investors Are Still Getting a Worse Deal
Large financial institutions have managed these needs together for years because they treat cash, borrowing and investments as parts of one system. That allows them to keep more money working without giving up the ability to act quickly, while ordinary investors are usually left doing a rough version of the same thing by hand. They move money between brokers, trading platforms and other services, and every transfer adds more effort, delay and room for error.
That problem becomes even more frustrating in perpetual markets, where the cost of keeping a trade open can change quickly. Kaiko showed how dramatic that change can be in May 2024, when the charges for holding Ether perps went from their lowest level in more than a year to a multi-month high in just three days.
When costs can move that quickly, investors inevitably spend more time wondering how long they can afford to stay than asking whether the thinking behind the trade still holds.
Some people will argue that these changing charges are simply how perpetual markets keep themselves balanced, and they are right that costs need to respond when too many traders take the same side. Even so, investors should still have a clear idea of how expensive the position could become before they commit their money.
Predictability is often more useful than the cheapest possible price at the beginning. A known cost can be included in the plan, compared with the expected return and weighed against the risks, whereas an open-ended cost turns a sensible long-term decision into a guessing game. And over the weeks or months a position is held, a capped and transparent charge is often the cheaper one as well, because the investor never pays the sudden spikes that punish crowded trades. Lowering the cost of holding means winning on both counts: leverage that costs less, at a price that can be planned around.
Bringing earning, investing and access to money closer together will introduce risks, which means those risks must be explained in plain language. Investors should know where returns come from, what could go wrong and who carries the loss, because easier access means very little when the important details remain buried.
Finance has often improved by removing divisions that no longer serve a useful purpose. Online brokers reduced the number of middlemen, multi-currency accounts reduced the need for several bank relationships and modern investment accounts made it easier to manage different investments in one place.
Digital finance should now take the next step by making money more productive without forcing investors to keep rearranging it. A mature market should help people reach more opportunities, understand the cost of staying invested and keep more of their money working while they wait, because conviction becomes far more valuable when patience no longer comes with an unpredictable penalty.
It is encouraging to see the industry looking for better ways to make these costs easier to plan for, and I believe this will become a major focus over the next few years. Stable Funding Perps are one example, because they are designed to show investors the most they could pay to keep a position open before they make the trade.
The cost starts at zero when the market is balanced, only rises when too many people move to the same side and can never go above the limit shown at the start. They also include dividend payments, which gives investors a much clearer idea of what they could actually earn after costs and whether the position still makes sense to hold for weeks or months. Pair that predictability with money that keeps earning while it waits, and both costs — the price of staying flexible and the price of staying invested — begin to fall away. That kind of clarity could be what finally makes long-term conviction practical in crypto.
