Trump's Crypto Policies Push Perpetual Futures Into the U.S. Mainstream
0xBroomberg
The CFTC approved perpetual futures contracts for the first time in May 2025, with Coinbase, Kraken, and Kalshi immediately launching leveraged long-short trading for US users. This means a trillion-dollar market long confined to offshore exchanges is now inside the US regulatory framework — and legacy financial institutions face a direct challenge.
What are perpetual futures, and why couldn't Americans use them before?
Perpetual futures — futures contracts with no expiration date — let investors place leveraged long or short bets on crypto prices without periodically "rolling" into new contracts.
In plain terms = traditional futures are like a coupon with an expiry date; perpetual futures are like a membership card that never expires.
The trade-off: holders pay a periodic funding rate that fluctuates with market interest rates, designed to anchor the futures price close to the spot price.
Before the CFTC's approval, perpetual futures traded actively on offshore exchanges like Binance and Hyperliquid. US users had no regulated access.
What did the Trump administration change, and who got in first?
Since taking office, Trump has broadly loosened crypto-financial regulation — stablecoins, prediction markets, and tokenized equities have all gained legal standing. Perpetual futures are the latest step.
The CFTC granted its first approval in May 2025. Kalshi, Coinbase, and Kraken rolled out products to US users immediately.
This means → US investors can now do on regulated platforms what previously required going offshore. The room for regulatory arbitrage has shrunk sharply.
Why are legacy players alarmed?
CME — the world's largest derivatives exchange — has sued the CFTC over the approval, alleging the regulator bypassed formal rulemaking and Congressional oversight.
CME's outgoing CEO Terry Duffy called perpetual futures "a casino on an exchange" and warned that retail investors may underestimate leverage risk.
This reflects a deeper concern: what legacy institutions really fear is not just risk but a new product form threatening their core business — the pricing power and volume monopoly of standardized futures contracts.
Can perpetual futures expand to equities and commodities?
Platforms like Kalshi are seeking to extend the perpetual-futures structure to equities, commodities, and other asset classes. If approved, investors could place similar bets on oil, gold, and more.
But Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour stated explicitly that, out of deference to Congress's agriculture committees, Kalshi will not launch food-price-linked perpetual futures for now.
The agriculture committee's position: contracts that expire on Friday — sparing traders from weekend monitoring — represent "a reasonable policy argument." In plain terms = regulators worry that a never-expiring speculative instrument could make food prices more volatile.
What structural limits do perpetual futures have for large institutions?
No fixed expiry means no ability to lock in a price at a specific point in time — a farmer cannot hedge a delivery-day grain price, and an airline cannot hedge a specific month's fuel cost.
Large financial institutions typically rely on swap contracts — bespoke hedging tools negotiated privately with banks — to meet their needs. The standardized structure of perpetual futures is actually too rigid.
This means → the primary battleground for perpetual futures will likely remain retail and mid-size speculators, not traditional hedging counterparties.
What to watch next?
Market participants worry that perpetual futures could distort spot prices — if speculation moves the actual price of food or energy, it becomes a political issue.
Whether platforms like Kalshi can extend their product line to traditional commodities within regulatory boundaries is the next critical checkpoint.
This signals a deeper contest: for crypto-native financial instruments to enter traditional markets, the technical barrier has already been cleared. The political barrier is the real gate.
Content is for reference only, not financial advice.