Kalshi filed with the SEC and CFTC on Friday to offer perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks, joining Coinbase in the race to bring crypto-style derivatives to equity markets. The proposal submitted the same day as Coinbase's filing would allow US traders to access contracts on single stocks with no expiration date, using periodic funding payments to keep contract prices aligned with underlying equities. Kalshi said the contracts would be treated as security futures products and cleared through its CFTC-registered clearinghouse, Kalshi Klear. The CFTC has yet to approve the proposal. Payward, Kraken's parent company, also filed through Bitnomial Exchange to offer the same products, targeting ten equities including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon with plans for 24/5 trading.
The filings follow the CLARITY Act's Senate failure on September 15, which fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance, and precede SEC Chair Paul Atkins's statement that the agency would "act decisively" within existing statutory authority to provide regulatory certainty. The timing suggests operators are betting on regulatory green lights even without new legislation. Kalshi already offers crypto perpetuals on Bitcoin, Ether, Solana, and XRP after receiving CFTC approval for its Bitcoin perpetual in May, establishing a compliance template that may smooth the stock-futures path.
There is no trade because the filing is a regulatory process event with no defined timeline for approval and no transmission mechanism to crypto spot or derivatives pricing. The CFTC has yet to approve Kalshi's proposal, and the window from submission to decision can span months. This is not a product launch or a liquidity event — it is a filing. Even if approved, the impact is on equity derivatives market structure, not crypto asset prices. The event matters for Kalshi's business and for regulated derivatives competition, but it does not price into crypto assets before approval.
This becomes a trade if the CFTC approves Kalshi's stock perpetuals and approval commentary explicitly names crypto perpetuals as a template for broader derivatives expansion. At that point, watch for increased institutional participation in crypto perps as traditional equity traders gain familiarity with the funding-rate mechanism. A second trigger: if Coinbase or Bitnomial receive approval first and Kalshi's filing stalls, that creates a competitive lag story with possible impact on Kalshi's crypto perpetual volume.
Watch for the CFTC's response to the filing. Until then, this is regulatory noise with no price mechanism.
Source: CoinTelegraph