Overview
- The CFTC announced the approvals on Tuesday, Nov. 3, allowing perpetual futures tied to individual U.S. stocks to begin trading on exchanges that hold CFTC designated contract market status and have filed SEC notice-registration for security futures.
- Exchanges including Kalshi, Coinbase Derivatives and Bitnomial filed rule changes proposing single-stock perps with extended trading hours and concrete margin rules such as Kalshi’s 15.50% customer-margin floor.
- Hours after the CFTC statement the Capital Markets Alliance, backed by Cboe and Citadel Securities, sued in federal court to block the approvals and argued the contracts are security-based swaps that fall under SEC authority.
- A federal judge denied a temporary trading halt but issued a preliminary finding that the challengers are likely to succeed on the question of whether these contracts meet the statutory definition of swaps rather than futures and set near-term briefing deadlines.
- If upheld the CFTC move could shift offshore perp activity into regulated U.S. markets and change margin, clearing and retail access rules, while the parallel CME lawsuit over crypto perps and the new case mean the product’s broad adoption remains legally unsettled.