Bankless · Monday, September 14, 2026
Contrary to the notion that options and perpetual futures are directly competing, Nick Forster argues they are complementary instruments. While perpetuals are a 'blunt instrument' useful for quick price discovery and short-term speculation, options act as a 'Swiss Army Knife' for more complex strategies like hedging, yield generation, and fine-tuned speculation, enabling the creation of 'infinite payoff factories.'
“They're completely complementary. And we support options in perps, like portfolio margined and cross margined on derive. Like you need them both in different spots. And perps are great. As I said, great instruments. You're not going to hear me arguing against perps at any point in time. But you need options also.”
“Because I would say perps are, yeah, like more of a blunt instrument that's simple to use. You have a leverage slider that good for price discovery and short dated speculation. Options are much more like a Swiss Army Knife.”
“The reason we started Derive in the first place was because you can create any payoff structure imaginable for hedging, yield generation, or speculation out of a different combination of calls and puts.”