The CFTC approved Kalshi's Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual futures contract on Friday, marking the first formal U.S. clearance for a product American traders have long accessed only on offshore platforms.
Key Points:
- The CFTC issued its first formal approval for a regulated U.S. Bitcoin perpetual futures contract.
- Kalshi plans to list perpetuals on more than a dozen other crypto assets, pending review.
- Coinbase received a separate no-action letter clearing it to offer perpetuals to U.S. users.
Kalshi Clears First Bitcoin Perpetual
The agency issued an order approving the BTCPERP contract, which references Bitcoin's spot price as its underlying market. Perpetual contracts never expire. That open-ended structure has made them the most popular way to trade crypto with leverage around the world.
Those trades generated about $61.7 trillion in global volume during 2025, almost all of it on offshore exchanges such as Binance, Bybit and OKX that operate outside U.S. oversight. Domestic platforms had largely stayed away.
The new order lets American users hold leveraged Bitcoin positions onshore, without routing their money through foreign venues that sit beyond U.S. regulators' reach.
Kalshi filed the product on May 29 under the CFTC's voluntary review framework for new contracts. The regulator found that the contract met the Commodity Exchange Act. The company now wants to list perpetuals on more than a dozen other crypto currencies, pending further regulatory review.
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Selig, Coinbase Hail Onshore Win
CFTC Chair Michael Selig called the move a "major step forward" for U.S. crypto policy and market structure. He said it pulls one of the market's busiest segments onshore. Selig, the commission's only sitting member, has pushed to widen regulated crypto trading in the U.S. since taking the post earlier this year.
Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said the Friday launch turns his firm from a prediction market into a full-service derivatives exchange. He argued that "Onshore, safe and regulated perps will improve capital allocation" for U.S. businesses and traders. The shift puts Kalshi in direct competition with the offshore giants that long dominated the perpetuals market.
The CFTC separately cleared Coinbase to offer crypto perpetuals through a no-action letter tied to its Deribit unit. CEO Brian Armstrong said the exchange can now connect U.S. users to global options and perpetual futures, including products on Deribit. Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal called it a "massive first," noting derivatives drive roughly 80% of global crypto trading volume.
How Perpetuals Reached U.S. Markets
Selig signaled in Mar. that the agency would bring true perpetual futures onshore within a matter of months. Before Friday, Bitnomial self-certified a Bitcoin perpetual in Apr. 2025, and Coinbase's derivatives arm followed with smaller Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) contracts in Jul. 2025. Those products leaned on a lighter non-objection route, leaving Kalshi's order as the first to win the regulator's full sign-off.
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