The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has approved KalshiEX to list a bitcoin perpetual futures contract in the United States, opening the door to a product that has dominated crypto derivatives trading globally but until now remained largely confined to offshore venues.
The CFTC issued a policy statement and two no action letters on Thursday, including one allowing Coinbase US customers to access perpetuals on Coinbase’s Dubai derivatives exchange Deribit. That no action letter also addresses how US brokers can offer customers access to perpetual contracts on foreign venues.
Perpetual contracts differ from traditional futures in that they have no fixed expiration date. Instead of converging to the spot price at expiry, they use a funding rate mechanism, periodic payments exchanged between long and short position holders based on the difference between the contract price and the underlying spot price, to maintain price alignment. The structure eliminates the need for traders to roll positions across contract expiries and concentrates liquidity in a single instrument, making perpetuals the dominant hedging and speculation tool in crypto markets globally.
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