Kalshi and Coinbase both submitted proposals on Friday to offer stock perpetual futures tied to individual US equities, filing simultaneously with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC has not yet approved either proposal. Kalshi said its contracts would be treated as security futures products and cleared through its CFTC-registered clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear.
Perpetual futures have no preset expiration date and use periodic funding payments between long and short positions to keep contract prices aligned with the underlying asset. The structure is already widely used in crypto markets. Kalshi currently offers perpetual futures tied to Bitcoin, Ether, Solana and XRP in the US after receiving CFTC approval for its Bitcoin perpetual contract in May, making Friday’s equity filing a direct extension of an existing regulatory relationship.
Kraken’s parent company Payward also filed through its Bitnomial Exchange to offer the same products, with plans to initially cover 10 US equities including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon, targeting 24/5 trading availability. The field of operators seeking to bring single-stock perpetual futures to the US market is becoming crowded quickly.
The Regulatory Backdrop
The filings arrived days after the CLARITY Act, a broader crypto market structure bill, failed to advance in the US Senate on September 15, falling short of the 60 votes needed to proceed. The day after that vote, SEC Chair Paul Atkins said the agency would “act decisively” within its existing statutory authority to provide regulatory clarity “with or without legislation.”
That statement matters for these filings. The regulatory path for stock perpetual futures does not depend on Congress passing new legislation. Both the SEC and CFTC have existing frameworks that could accommodate these products, and Atkins’ comments suggest the SEC is not waiting for Capitol Hill to move first. As covered in this publication, New York’s ongoing lawsuit against Kalshi over its prediction market operations adds a layer of state-level complexity that sits alongside the federal approval process.
Stock Perpetual Futures Could Redraw How Americans Trade Equities
I’m not a great fan of betting and prediction platforms getting this much recognition but I can see that the implications of stock perpetual futures reaching mainstream US markets deserve serious attention, and I think the simultaneous filings from Kalshi, Coinbase and Kraken on the same day are telling. These are three companies making a coordinated bet that the regulatory window is open and that whoever gets approved first captures a significant first-mover advantage in a market that does not yet exist in the US.
The product itself is genuinely disruptive to traditional equity markets. Perpetual futures allow leveraged, round-the-clock exposure to stock prices without the complexity of options or the expiration management of standard futures.
In crypto, they became the dominant trading instrument precisely because retail traders found them easier to use than alternatives. Applied to Tesla or Nvidia, the same dynamic could pull significant trading volume away from traditional exchanges and options markets toward platforms that are already fluent in this product type.
The CFTC’s response to these filings will say a great deal about how seriously US regulators are taking the convergence of crypto infrastructure and traditional equity markets that has been building throughout 2026.
