The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Friday, May 29, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. ET formally approved the first bitcoin perpetual futures contract on a domestic registered exchange, ending years of perps being the exclusive domain of offshore platforms and opening a new product class for American traders.
The CFTC issued an Order for Approval to KalshiEX, LLC — a designated contract market — for the listing of BTCPERP, a perpetual contract referencing the spot price of bitcoin. In a simultaneous action, the agency issued a no-action letter to Coinbase Financial Markets (CFM) allowing U.S. clients access to global perpetual futures products through Coinbase Bermuda, with bitcoin, ether, and stablecoins accepted as margin collateral.
"This marks Kalshi's evolution from prediction market leader to next-gen derivatives exchange," Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said in a post on the company's website. "Onshore, safe and regulated perps will improve capital allocation and risk management for countless American businesses."
Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal called it a "massive first for the industry" in a post on X.
CFTC chair Mike Selig framed the moves in explicitly political terms. "Having true perpetual contracts in the United States is a major step forward in delivering on President Trump's goal of cementing America as the crypto capital of the world," Selig wrote in an opinion piece published Friday at CoinDesk. He said the agency is now providing "a workable framework for true crypto asset perpetual contracts" that will "limit excessive leverage, volatility and systemic risk." The announcements came days after President Trump posted on Truth Social that the previous administration's regulators "nearly DESTROYED the American Crypto Industry by driving Bitcoin, Crypto Perpetuals, and INNOVATION offshore."
Perpetual futures are derivatives with no expiration date that allow traders to hold leveraged long or short positions on an asset indefinitely. They dominate global crypto trading volume — far exceeding standard futures — but have historically been unavailable to U.S. retail traders on regulated domestic venues.
The timing is not without irony. Just one day before the CFTC approval, a SPACEX-USDH perpetual contract on the decentralized platform Hyperliquid flash-crashed 45%, liquidating $1.5 million in positions in a matter of minutes — a reminder that perp markets can move violently. Selig's framework is designed to address exactly that risk, with leverage limits and volatility guardrails built into the approval conditions.
The Coinbase no-action letter routes the company's perp products through its Bermuda entity, where they are treated as foreign futures — a structure that lets CFM bring offshore liquidity onshore without requiring Coinbase Bermuda to register as a U.S. futures exchange. For Kalshi, the approval builds directly on its existing registration as a designated contract market, extending a platform known for event contracts into the professional derivatives space.
With two of the largest U.S. crypto platforms now cleared to offer perps, the product class that has long defined global crypto trading is set to arrive, at scale, in the American market.