Coinbase, Kalshi File With CFTC to Offer Perpetual Futures on U.S. Stocks

Two CFTC-regulated exchanges took formal steps on September 18, 2026 to bring perpetual futures on individual U.S. stocks into the regulated market, filing for products that would let traders hold no-expiry derivative positions tied to single equities and exchange-traded funds.

Coinbase Derivatives, LLC asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to approve its Equity Perpetual Contracts under Section 5c(c)(1) of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC Regulation 41.23(b), in a filing labeled Coinbase Derivatives Submission #2026-62. The same day, KalshiEX LLC self-certified a new Chapter 14 of its rulebook under CFTC Regulations 40.6 and 41.24, establishing rules for listing and trading cash-settled, perpetual-duration security futures products (“Perpetual SFPs”), and separately requested Commission approval of the contract and its eligible underlying securities under Regulations 40.3 and 41.23(b).

Neither product is available for trading. The CFTC’s industry filings portal lists Coinbase’s “Single Stock Perpetual Futures Contract” — categorized as a security futures product and single stock future, dated September 18 — with status “Approval Pending (45),” and Coinbase said it plans to list only after Commission approval. Kalshi stated in its filing that it will not list any Perpetual SFP for trading until the Commission has approved the contract.

Coinbase’s Equity Perpetual Contracts

Each Coinbase contract is a cash-settled perpetual future referencing a single underlying equity security or ETF share, which makes each one a “security futures product” subject to joint CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission jurisdiction. Coinbase Derivatives is a CFTC-designated contract market and is notice-registered with the SEC as a national securities exchange solely for trading security futures products.

The submission covers contracts referencing the most liquid U.S.-listed equities and ETFs that satisfy the exchange’s Rule 1203 listing standards, with an Apple (AAPL) Single Stock Perpetual Future as the representative specification; the filing does not enumerate the initial lineup. The representative AAPL contract is sized at 0.01 times the AAPL index — roughly a $2.25 notional value with Apple near $225, per the filing’s example — is settled in U.S. dollars, and would be centrally cleared by Nodal Clear, LLC.

Under the filing, the funding rate is calculated hourly from mark-price-versus-index readings taken every three minutes, averaged, smoothed 75%/25% against the prior hour’s rate, and clamped at plus or minus 0.10% per hour; no funding rate is published for any hour in which the market is closed, paused, or halted. The contracts would trade from Sunday 8:00 p.m. ET through Friday 5:00 p.m. ET — the same window in which the exchange’s security-specific index is live — with daily settlement struck at 4:00 p.m. ET. Coinbase Derivatives said it intends to make the request effective and list the contracts shortly following Commission approval, pending any additional necessary regulatory approvals.

Kalshi’s Chapter 14 Framework for Perpetual SFPs

Kalshi’s self-certified rules are intended to take effect after the Regulation 40.6(a) review period, or earlier if the Commission permits. The exchange proposes listing Perpetual SFPs on up to, as of the filing, fifty-eight large-capitalization U.S. exchange-listed equity securities. The contracts have no pre-specified expiration date and convey exposure through a daily mark-to-market plus a periodic funding rate that anchors each contract to its underlying security’s spot price. Chapter 14 spans eleven parts, covering listing standards and eligibility, contract specifications, trading safeguards, customer margin, position limits, corporate actions, sales practices, market surveillance, membership, and interaction with clearing.

Kalshi’s initial listing standards require an underlying security to have an estimated deliverable supply above 20 million shares, a minimum market capitalization of $100 billion, and an average daily transaction value of at least $450 million over the prior six months, with a New Product Committee retaining discretion to decline any listing. Each Perpetual SFP has a contract unit of 100 shares, is quoted in dollars and cents per share with a $0.005 minimum price fluctuation, and settles in cash.

The framework sets a 15.50% minimum customer margin requirement that applies at all times, with no separate initial and maintenance rates and no lower rate for offsetting positions or exempt market makers — a structure the filing states will constitute “higher margin levels” under the Exchange Act. Position limits default to 50,000 Standard Contract Equivalents, falling to 25,000 in the last three trading days of an expiring contract; because a perpetual has no expiring contract month, expiration under the rules can be triggered by delisting or accelerated final settlement. Liquidity-tiered limits or position accountability alternatives are permitted under Regulation 41.25(b)(3), but no position may exceed 200,000 Standard Contract Equivalents.

Perpetual SFPs would trade from 6:00 p.m. ET Sunday through 5:00 p.m. ET Friday with a daily maintenance window, would be cleared through Kalshi Klear LLC, and would be halted whenever a regulatory halt is in effect for the underlying security. Kalshi also stated in the filing that it submitted a Form 1-N notice filing to the SEC on September 3, 2026 to register as a national securities exchange for the limited purpose of trading security futures products, and that the SEC issued a notice on September 8 acknowledging the filing and its effectiveness as of September 3.

The BTCPERP Precedent and the Approval Path

Both exchanges are proceeding through a voluntary approval route rather than simple self-certification of the products. On May 29, 2026, the Commission ordered that Kalshi’s BTCPERP — a cash-settled bitcoin perpetual — be approved for listing as a futures contract, the first such approval of a perpetual contract in the U.S. The Commission said contract categorization is case-by-case and limited its analysis to that contract and similarly structured perpetuals referencing bitcoin or other digital commodities with deep, active, continuous spot trading, stating the analysis does not extend to other asset classes. It also noted that perpetual contracts referencing equity securities or narrow-based security indexes, among others, would benefit from review by the Commission and the SEC.

Coinbase’s filing describes the Regulation 41.23(b) voluntary approval route as precisely the procedural path the Commission has directed for perpetual contracts on equity securities, and Kalshi’s concurrent product request uses the same Regulation 40.3/41.23(b) approval mechanism. Kalshi has already extended perpetuals beyond crypto on its own exchange: on September 8, 2026 it self-certified a gold perpetual futures contract (GOLDPERP), stating it intended to list the contract on September 9, 2026.

How Stock Perpetuals Would Work — and Where Things Stand

A perpetual future is a cash-settled futures contract with no fixed expiration date. Instead of converging to the spot price at expiry, it relies on a periodic funding rate mechanism: when the contract trades above the underlying’s spot price, longs pay shorts, and when it trades below spot the flow reverses. The recurring charge on whichever side is pushing the contract away from spot creates a continuous arbitrage incentive pulling the two prices back together.

Coinbase’s filing states that equity perpetuals remain unavailable to U.S. investors today and trade instead on offshore venues beyond the reach of U.S. regulators; approving the contracts, the exchange argues, would bring equity perpetual derivatives within a U.S.-regulated framework for the first time under the security futures regime, which includes centralized clearing, cross-market surveillance, and supervisory authority under both the CEA and the Exchange Act.

For now, both proposals remain proposals. Coinbase’s docket entry shows approval pending, with listing planned only after Commission approval, and Kalshi has committed not to list any Perpetual SFP until the Commission approves the contract. Neither filing sets a firm launch date.