Kalshi Files to Extend Bitcoin (BTC) Perpetual-Futures Model to Stocks After $5.5B Debut

Bitcoin News

Kalshi has filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to launch perpetual futures tied to a major US stock index and copper, extending the leveraged contract structure it first built around Bitcoin (BTC). The filing, submitted Tuesday, places the prediction-market operator in direct competition with CME Group and Cboe Global Markets, two exchanges that have built decades of business on contracts with fixed expiration dates. A never-expiring contract would bring a different risk and funding model to those markets, one that traders have so far only seen in crypto. Perpetual futures, known as perps, carry no expiration date, so traders can hold a position indefinitely while paying or receiving periodic funding that keeps the contract price aligned with the underlying asset. That structure has deep roots offshore, where exchanges built entire businesses around crypto perps before domestic regulators approved a similar listing. The landscape changed in May, when the CFTC approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual contract, the first such contract allowed on a US-regulated exchange. Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour said the contract crossed $1 billion in trading volume within its first week and topped $5.5 billion within two weeks of launching on June 3. He framed those numbers as evidence that demand for never-expiring leverage reaches beyond digital assets. Kalshi has since used that approval as a template, filing for gold and silver perpetuals last month and adding the stock-index and copper contracts on Tuesday. The equity-index filing leans on standardized contract sizes, central clearing and margin requirements, the same arguments Kalshi used to distinguish its Bitcoin product from swap treatment. With the new contracts, Kalshi is aiming to pair crypto’s perpetual model with the liquidity of traditional index and commodity markets. The filing lands at a moment when traditional venues are beginning to copy crypto’s playbook.

The stock-index application intensifies the regulatory fight over Bitcoin perpetuals. CME Group has sued over the Bitcoin contract, arguing that a perpetual is a swap, not a future, because it lacks the fixed expiration that has defined the exchange’s listed products. Kalshi and the CFTC reject that reading, maintaining that a perpetual is simply a futures contract without a fixed expiration date. The latest filing applies the same reasoning to a broad equity benchmark and to copper, describing standardized contract sizes, central clearing and margin requirements as the features that make the products futures rather than swaps. The distinction is central to the case, since the CFTC’s May approval was based on treating Kalshi’s Bitcoin contract as a future. A ruling against that reading would put not only the equity product in question, but also the existing Bitcoin contract. Kalshi has used the same contract-design language in its gold and silver filings, making the stock application part of a broader category push. Traditional venues are not waiting for that dispute to resolve. Cboe Global Markets launched Mini-S&P 500 binary options through Interactive Brokers in June, although those contracts settle on a fixed date and therefore do not replicate the perpetual structure. Meanwhile, the offshore market that invented the perp is contracting. BitMEX, the exchange that created the crypto perpetual swap in 2014, announced in July that it will shut down by September 23, and analysts have pointed to the shutdown as evidence that US-regulated venues are drawing that volume onshore. The CFTC has not set a review timeline for Kalshi’s stock-index filing, so the CME lawsuit’s outcome will likely decide how quickly never-expiring leveraged exposure reaches American equity traders.

Together, the filing and the legal fight show that crypto’s derivative structure is becoming the template for mainstream finance. The official CFTC filing positions Kalshi’s product as a future, not a swap, while the Bitcoin product’s $5.5 billion debut gives the company a measurable track record to point regulators to. Our reading is that the outcome depends less on demand than on the CME lawsuit, which will decide whether the entire category remains viable on US venues. If the swap label wins, never-expiring leverage could move back offshore; if the futures reading holds, the Bitcoin-tested model could become standard in equity and commodity markets. Until that ruling lands, traders should watch the funding-rate mechanism and the CFTC’s review timeline.