Harrison’s Architect exchange will primarily focus on TradFi assets.
Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, the United States-based arm of the infamous FTX exchange led by Sam Bankman-Fried, has announced the launch of Architect, a perpetual derivatives exchange.
Architect’s AX exchange allows users to trade perpetual futures on traditional assets, such as stocks, indices, interest rates, and commodities, on a centralized, regulated platform.
Perpetual futures for traditional finance assets have been a hot topic in 2025, with centralized and decentralized venues such as Robinhood and Hyperliquid racing to dominate the space and attract new users.
AX futures will leverage the central limit order book (CLOB) model and offer centrally cleared, anonymous order matching.
The exchange is operated by the company’s Bermuda-based affiliate, Architect Bermuda Ltd, and according to the release, AX’s launch under the Bermuda arm’s regulatory licenses is “a critical step forward for global derivatives trading, bringing key innovations in digital asset products to vast, comprehensively-regulated traditional financial markets.”
While perpetuals have always been a crypto-focused product, the sector has exploded in 2025, with more than $5 trillion traded across all decentralized venues so far this year. For context, the cumulative decentralized perpetual volume up until this year was just $4.2 trillion.
Cumulative perpetuals volume – DeFiLlamaSource: https://thedefiant.io/news/cefi/former-ftx-us-president-brett-harrison-to-launch-perpetuals-exchange
