Popular crypto exchange Coinbase and prediction market Kalshi have both filed proposals to offer perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks.
Coinbase Derivatives submitted its proposal to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on September 18. The filing covers cash-settled perpetual futures linked to individual US stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Initial equity offering should include around 50-60 large-cap corporate names such as Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia. The contracts would have no fixed expiration date and would not give traders ownership of the underlying securities.
The same day, Kalshi filed its own proposed rule change with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and submitted the proposal to the CFTC. Its contracts would also have no preset expiration date and would use periodic funding payments between long and short positions to keep prices aligned with the underlying stocks. Kalshi said the products would be structured as security futures and cleared through its CFTC-registered clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear.
Neither proposal has been approved by the CFTC yet, so the products are not yet available to US traders. However, today we observe a new stage in the effort to bring perpetuals, which have earlier largely developed within crypto markets, into TradFi.
Perpetual futures allow traders to maintain positions without the fixed expiry dates associated with conventional futures. Funding payments are generally used to keep the derivative’s price close to the underlying asset. The structure has become a major part of crypto derivatives trading because it supports continuous leveraged exposure without requiring traders to roll expiring contracts.
The US market has already seen movement toward regulated crypto perpetuals. In May, Kraken’s parent company Payward filed through Bitnomial, a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange, to bring perpetual futures onshore for US traders. Kraken’s planned offering uses the same basic no-expiration structure, with an eight-hour funding rate.
At that point, Kalshi had alreadyreceived CFTC approval to list BTCPERP, a perpetual futures contract tied to the spot price of Bitcoin, while Coinbase Financial Markets moved to offer U.S. institutional clients access to global crypto options and perpetual futures markets through Deribit.
“US traders have been waiting for a regulated, domestic way to trade the product that defines global crypto derivatives markets,” said John Palmer, Kraken’s global head of derivatives. “Perpetuals, spot, margin and CME-listed futures now sit on one interface — and that changes how US clients build and manage crypto positions.”
International platforms have meanwhile extended the model to equities. In March, OKX launched equity perpetual swaps covering more than 20 stocks and indices, including Nvidia, Tesla, Apple and the other members of the so-called Magnificent Seven. The products offer up to 5x leverage and allow eligible traders outside the US to use crypto assets as collateral.
The expansion has also reached onchain markets. Katana launched its perpetual futures platform in March after acquiring decentralised exchange IDEX, adding leveraged derivatives to its onchain trading infrastructure.
Decentralised perpetual trading only continues to grow, and such platforms provide users with always-on price exposure.
