Kalshi filed on September 19.
The product is a single-stock perpetual contract (perpetual futures—no expiration date, with a leveraged contract anchored to spot via funding rates). The underlying is simply a single stock.
The day before, on September 18, Coinbase also filed. It wants to let U.S. retail investors trade Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia on a 24/5 basis. Note that it’s 24/5, not 24/7. U.S. stock markets are closed on weekends—no matter how wild it gets on-chain, you still have to wait until Monday.
Going even further back, Bitnomial is doing something similar. The three of them are working together—different paths, same goal: bring the offshore perpetual-style play into the U.S. regulatory framework.
The offshore market has been doing this for a long time. On September 18, Binance just launched 24/7 FX perpetuals, and there’s also a separate pricing mechanism on weekends. It’s no longer new for crypto exchanges to offer traditional-asset perpetuals.
The difference is the regulatory basis.
Coinbase’s filing went through the CFTC (U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission). Whether a single-stock perpetual is a commodity futures contract or a security derivative—the line has always been blurry. On September 18, the CFTC sent crypto market rules to the White House for review, and on the same day the SEC opened a new channel for tokenized stock trading. Both agencies are pushing forward using existing authority.
Congress is the one blocking it. The CLARITY Act didn’t make progress in the Senate. CoinDesk’s September 19 analysis directly asked: How long can the institutional rules that replace it hold up?
This isn’t a small matter. When legislation is missing, rules have to be cobbled together from enforcement and approval opinions. It gets approved today, and tomorrow someone else might come in and set up shop—things could flip instantly.
When I dug into the details of Coinbase’s application, I noticed one point: the contract provides leveraged exposure, not ownership of the stock. No voting rights, no dividends—purely a bet on the price.
What’s the appeal of this for retail traders? No need for a U.S. stock account, no need to wait for T+1 settlement, and you can place orders on weekends too. Sounds great.
The other side of leverage is liquidation. Individual-stock volatility is smaller than BTC’s, but on earnings-night gap-ups, it can still wipe out a batch of positions. The offshore market has been playing this game for years, and liquidation/bust data has never looked good.
Kalshi’s positioning is more nuanced. It comes from the prediction market world, and in 2024 it won a CFTC lawsuit to get election-contract eligibility. Now it’s doing single-stock perpetuals, which is essentially crossing over from event contracts into expiring derivatives.
At the same time, Bastion received conditional approval from the OCC to operate as a national trust bank license. Stablecoin custody, wallets, and payment infrastructure are bundled into a single federal-regulated entity.
The two lines run in parallel: one is to plug crypto products into traditional finance pipelines; the other is to plug traditional assets into crypto trading interfaces.
Single-stock perpetuals belong to the latter.
There are quite a few leveraged tools that U.S. retail investors can access right now. On September 19, REX just rolled out 2x leveraged ETFs tied to Bitcoin treasury company Strive. The product structure is simple, but the fees eat into returns. Perpetual contracts have no expiration date; funding is settled every day, so the long-term carrying cost isn’t low.
Who’s filing, I’ll list them:
Kalshi, September 19, single-stock perpetuals;
Coinbase, September 18, single-stock perpetuals, with underlying assets including Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia;
Bitnomial, pushing similar products around the same time.
All three are waiting for the CFTC’s nod.
One background detail can’t be missed. On September 18, the CFTC sent the rules to the White House for review, and the timing was after the CLARITY Act got stalled in the Senate. Institutions are racing to seize the legislative window before it closes.
How long will the White House review take? Nobody can give a timeline.
If the CFTC gives the first batch of single-stock perpetuals the green light within this year, the retail leverage casino in the U.S. would expand from crypto tokens to individual stocks. Then, around the nights before and after Apple’s earnings, how the on-chain perpetual funding rates and the post-market price gaps on Nasdaq interact is the first dataset I’ll be watching next.