Crypto investing is on the rise. Statistics show global cryptocurrency ownership has increased from just over 100 million people in 2020 to more than 500 million in 2023. In the US, the number of adults owning crypto jumped from 30 percent in 2023 to 40 percent in 2024.
The emergence of new avenues for engaging with crypto is one reason investing is growing. In the early days of crypto, spot trading was the primary option. Investors bought and sold at current market prices, owning the crypto they purchased and hoping they could sell at a profit.
Recently, however, the market has evolved to offer other options, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and perpetual futures. The new options make it more efficient to engage with crypto trading, which promises to open the door to even greater investor involvement.
Patrick Gruhn, Founder and CEO of Perpetuals.com, wants to see investors have even more avenues for crypto investing. He is launching Perpetuals.com to provide a market infrastructure for investors seeking to engage in perpetual futures and other types of crypto derivative trading.
“By drawing upon my passion for innovation and my experience in the crypto sector, I am convinced that my team and I will significantly contribute to the further development of the crypto sector worldwide,” Gruhn says about Perpetuals.com. “We want to offer investors real added value.”
A long history of startup success
Gruhn has a long history of driving startup success in the IT sector. He founded his first IT startup in Germany at just 18 years old and developed it into a company that received top ratings from German IT magazines more than 20 times. Success followed him to his next venture, a power supply company that he co-founded and helped to scale to serve more than 150,000 customers.
Gruhn developed a deep understanding of crypto while serving as a Partner at K&G Lawyers, a Swiss firm specializing in digital assets that was later renamed Crypto Lawyers. As he saw interest in crypto investing on the rise, he co-founded Digital Asset AG to enable efficient investing through products and services, including tokenization, broker API, and fractional shares. Digital Assets AG was acquired in 2022 and became FTX Europe.
A vision for improving European crypto markets
With Perpetuals.com, Gruhn aims to play a critical role in shaping the crypto landscape in Europe.
“Europe currently has a clear location advantage over the USA when it comes to many crypto investments,” Gruhn asserts. “Thanks to consistent regulation that creates legal certainty, Europe is — there is no other way to put it — currently the place to be for crypto investments.”
Perpetuals.com will be a market infrastructure startup that aligns with the European Union’s 2018 Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II). The directive imposes enhanced regulatory controls across the EU that broadly impact the financial sector. One of the directive’s main goals is to increase protective measures for investors by promoting greater transparency.
MiFID II addresses the dangers of dark pools, which facilitate anonymous financial exchanges and over-the-counter trading, by imposing stricter reporting requirements. Its controls address a wide range of financial instruments, including equities, commodities, futures, options, and exchange-traded funds, and apply to a wide variety of institutions, including bankers, traders, fund managers, and exchange officials.
A platform for supporting crypto derivatives trading
Crypto derivatives trading serves investors who want to engage in crypto markets without actually owning crypto assets. It involves financial contracts — known as derivatives — that are established between a buyer and seller. The value of the contract is based on the price of a designated cryptocurrency.
Derivatives provide several benefits that aren’t available to spot traders. For example, derivative traders can obtain a contract without paying the total cost of its value, a practice known as derivative leverage. Derivatives also allow investors to avoid the security risks that come with holding crypto.
A dated future is a type of derivative that has an expiration date, which can complicate contract management. Perpetual futures have no expiration date, allowing investors to gain long-term exposure to the crypto market. By eliminating the rollover fees investors incur when renewing a contract, perpetual futures also lower transaction costs.
Crypto exchanges like the one Gruhn is launching are essential components of the crypto derivatives ecosystem. They facilitate the finalization of contracts and ensure that any associated fees are exchanged according to the contract’s details.
Gruhn anticipates Perpetuals.com will launch by the end of 2024, bringing a powerful new derivative trading tool to the crypto space. “We will pursue a disruptive approach with our company foundation,” he asserts.