Stock Perps Get a CFTC Green Light—Crypto’s No-Expiry Playbook Heads to Wall Street

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has cleared perpetual futures contracts tied to individual stocks for trading on U.S. exchanges for the first time, bringing a crypto-native derivatives structure into the regulated equity market. The contracts were deemed approved under CFTC Regulation 40.3 and may be offered on designated contract markets registered with both the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission to trade security futures products.

Perpetual futures allow traders to take leveraged positions tied to an asset’s price without owning the underlying asset or facing an expiration date, provided they satisfy margin and funding requirements. BitMEX helped popularize the instruments, commonly called perps, in 2016. The CFTC did not identify which exchanges will offer the stock contracts or provide a timeline for trading to begin.

“Today’s announcement builds on that milestone by extending the availability of the perpetual futures contract instrument in the U.S. beyond digital commodities and into traditional securities,” CFTC Chairman Michael Selig said. The move follows the CFTC’s May approval of Bitcoin perpetual futures contracts for Kalshi and separate regulatory relief allowing Coinbase to provide access to certain cryptocurrency perpetual futures listed on an affiliated foreign exchange.

Selig said onboarding perpetual derivative products in the U.S. would allow American traders to access them under federal safeguards rather than being “forced to turn to offshore, and often unregulated, venues.” He credited a March memorandum of understanding between the CFTC and SEC for addressing a jurisdictional gap that had left such products in regulatory “no man’s land,” according to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins.

The approval came after regulatory filings in September from Coinbase, Kalshi, and Kraken parent Payward through its Bitnomial exchange. OG.com joined the effort days later, proposing stock contracts that could trade around the clock on weekdays. The CFTC also published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking on Monday seeking public input before formal rules are drafted, following the collapse of the Clarity Act last month.

The announcement also came nearly three months after President Donald Trump said the CFTC was working to bring decentralized crypto exchange Hyperliquid into the U.S. in a “fully compliant and legal fashion” during an Aug. 19 White House event. The CFTC’s broader approach remains contested: CME Group’s Chicago Mercantile Exchange sued the regulator in June, arguing that crypto perpetual futures should be regulated as swaps rather than futures and that the agency exceeded its authority, while the CFTC moved to dismiss the lawsuit in September.