Kalshi is contesting claims that volume in its crypto perpetual futures market was artificially inflated after Stealth Neolab co-founder Beni highlighted unusual trading patterns in the platform’s ether perpetual contract. In a Sept. 20 thread on X, Beni said the contract posted about $539 million in 24-hour volume against roughly $3.1 million in open interest, implying turnover of around 174 times. He later added that trades sized at exactly $5,500 accounted for 48% to 58% of ether perp notional volume on four days between Sept. 16 and Sept. 20, and said the largest position shown on Kalshi’s public leaderboard was $17,598 when he captured the data. Beni linked the activity to market makers or self-clearing members and cited a CFTC filing describing a program in which eligible makers receive 0.3 basis points while takers pay 0.3 basis points, netting to zero. Kalshi’s IcoBeast.eth rejected the allegations, saying the chart at the center of the dispute tracked prediction-market share rather than perpetuals volume and that Kalshi measures volume by maximum contract payout, as Polymarket does, because each contract settles at $1.

Kalshi is seeking regulatory approval to list roughly 60 perpetual futures tied to major U.S. stocks and ETFs, including names such as Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia, according to a Sept. 11 report by The Wall Street Journal. If approved, the contracts would let U.S. traders keep taking price exposure to those companies outside regular stock market hours through derivatives rather than spot shares. The proposal has drawn a sharp response from Citadel Securities, which said in a Sept. 9 comment letter that stock-linked derivatives trading outside the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission framework could create a parallel “shadow market” connected to U.S. equities without the same protections around best execution, order handling, trading halts, disclosure, and cross-market surveillance. The dispute centers on whether such products should fall under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the SEC. Kalshi already offers crypto perpetual products, including BTCPERP approved by the CFTC in May, and has added contracts tied to Ethereum, Solana, XRP, gold, and silver. The push into stock-linked perpetuals comes as 24/7 trading gains attention across U.S. markets and as Kalshi’s trading volumes have climbed sharply this year.

Robinhood Wallet’s integration with Lighter has become a major variable in how the market is valuing the on-chain perpetuals venue. Data cited by Milk Road shows Robinhood order flow now accounts for about 17% of Lighter’s daily trading volume, above a 30-day average near 12%. Robinhood has also said the Lighter perpetuals entry built into its wallet has generated about $7.29 billion in cumulative volume since Robinhood Chain launched on July 1. That growth, however, does not mean the business is fully proven. The perpetuals feature in Robinhood Wallet is not available to US users, so current activity is coming mainly from markets outside the United States. At the same time, LIT has doubled over the past 30 days, with part of the rally tied to expectations that regulated perpetual contracts may gradually become more acceptable in the US market. The opening may be real, but it is not the same as approval for Lighter. There is no evidence that Lighter has applied for a US trading license, and founder Vladimir Novakovski’s seat on the CFTC’s innovation advisory committee does not amount to regulatory clearance. The market is also still missing key details on user retention, how much incentive-driven volume will remain once rewards end, and how much of that activity can turn into recurring fee revenue for the protocol.

The CFTC has asked a Washington D.C. court to dismiss CME's lawsuit challenging Kalshi's bitcoin perpetual futures. Kalshi's cash-settled BTCPERP was approved in May, with no expiry date and a funding rate mechanism. CME argued the product is a swap rather than a futures contract, but the CFTC called the lawsuit an "overreaction" and noted CME could list similar products itself. CME must file a response by October 2.

Coinbase has filed notice registrations with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as it seeks approval to list perpetual futures on individual U.S. stocks for American customers, Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad said in a post on X. The move is only the first step in a two-agency approval process that also requires Commodity Futures Trading Commission signoff. Coinbase has not disclosed which stocks would be listed domestically, how much leverage traders would get, or when trading could begin. The proposal extends a product Coinbase already launched for non-U.S. customers in March, when it introduced single-stock perpetuals covering companies including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and Amazon. Perpetual futures already dominate offshore crypto trading, and bringing them to single-name equities would allow U.S. traders to take leveraged long or short positions around the clock without owning shares or rolling contracts. The filing comes as regulation and market structure around perpetuals continue to move. The CFTC cleared Kalshi’s BTCPERP contract in May and issued a no-action letter allowing Coinbase Financial Markets to route U.S. clients into perpetuals listed on Coinbase’s Bermuda venue as foreign futures. President Donald Trump said in August that CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring the offshore Hyperliquid platform onshore in a compliant and legal way. The classification fight is still playing out in court. CME Group sued the CFTC in June, arguing perpetual futures should be treated as swaps under Dodd-Frank rather than futures. The CFTC asked a judge on Wednesday to dismiss the case, saying CME cannot claim competitive injury when nothing stops it from listing perpetuals itself. Hyperliquid Labs is also in talks with Payward, Kraken’s parent, about entering the U.S. market.

CME Group relaunched single-stock futures on July 27, 2026, listing 55 standard contracts and 22 micro contracts tied to names including Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, and newly public SpaceX, while extending trading to 23 hours a day with a one-hour maintenance break. The move, as described in the Foresight article, is aimed at a market that has already been trained by crypto perpetuals to expect round-the-clock leveraged access. The report argues that CME is not introducing a new behavior so much as trying to pull an existing one back into the traditional exchange system. It contrasts the structure of perpetual contracts, where funding costs are settled during the holding period, with single-stock futures, where financing costs are embedded in the basis between futures and spot prices and where investors must roll positions before expiry. Foresight also highlights CME’s split posture on perpetuals. CEO Terry Duffy has criticized the product and CME has pushed for stricter regulation, yet Duffy has also said the exchange already has the technical and operational ability to offer perpetual contracts if customers want them. The broader question is whether traders who have become used to perpetuals’ interface, funding visibility, and trading style will switch to a more traditional futures product simply because it is now available nearly around the clock.

BitMEX, once the exchange most closely associated with crypto perpetual futures and 100x leverage, has announced that it will shut down its exchange operations. New account registrations have stopped, the platform will move into reduce-only mode on Aug. 26, 2026, and the final shutdown is scheduled for Sept. 23. The company said its assets exceed customer liabilities based on its published proof of reserves and liabilities, and said it had not lost customer funds to hacks in more than 11 years of operation. The closure caps a long arc that began with Arthur Hayes, Ben Delo and Samuel Reed launching BitMEX in 2014 and turned in 2016 with the release of XBTUSD, the perpetual swap that became a defining product of the crypto derivatives market. BitMEX reached its peak as trading volumes surged, its Hong Kong office moved into a record-rent floor at Cheung Kong Center, and its market structure reshaped global crypto trading. Its decline came from several directions at once: regulatory action over failures tied to registration, KYC and anti-money laundering controls; rivals that copied the perpetual model and used broader spot ecosystems to take liquidity; and a strategic expansion beyond derivatives that failed to produce a second breakthrough. In a final irony, the exchange that helped create the modern perpetual market is exiting just as U.S. regulators have begun allowing bitcoin perpetual futures into a regulated venue.

The U.S. push to bring crypto perpetual contracts onshore has quickly turned into a courtroom fight. Coinbase has launched U.S.-style perpetual futures on its CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange, starting with micro Bitcoin and Ether contracts, while KalshiEX won CFTC approval on May 29 to list BTCPERP, a perpetual contract tied to spot Bitcoin. On June 18, CME sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and its chairman, Michael Selig, in federal court in Washington, D.C., asking the court to void Kalshi’s approval and the related policy statement. At the center of the dispute is a basic legal question with large commercial consequences: whether perpetual contracts should be treated as futures or as swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act. CME argues they fit the statutory definition of swaps and should face a much stricter regulatory regime, including dealer registration, capital requirements and intensive reporting. The CFTC has pushed back, calling the lawsuit baseless and framing it as resistance from an incumbent exchange to a more competitive market. The case lands as U.S. venues roll out different perpetual models, from Kalshi’s no-expiry structure to Coinbase’s long-dated futures design that uses hourly interest accrual and twice-daily funding settlements. Funding rates, liquidation rules, collateral fragmentation and the possibility of stablecoin margin all now sit at the center of a growing fight over market structure, regulatory jurisdiction and who gets to shape a multibillion-dollar segment of crypto trading.