coindesk.com
Prediction marketplace Kalshi is planning to bring one of crypto's most popular trades to U.S. stocks, with perpetual futures tied to companies including Tesla, Apple and Nvidia that could trade around the clock.
The operator plans to seek regulatory approval for roughly 60 perpetual futures linked to individual stocks and exchange-traded funds, the Wall Street Journal reported late Thursday. If approved, they would be the first regulated single-stock perps offered in the U.S.
Perpetual futures, usually called perps, let traders bet on whether an asset will rise or fall, often with borrowed money, without the contract ever expiring. Traders instead make regular payments to one another that help keep the contract near the price of the asset it tracks.
They have become one of crypto's largest businesses since the soon to be defunct exchange BitMEX introduced these products in 2016, with newer venues such as Hyperliquid letting traders take leveraged positions on bitcoin and hundreds of tokens at any hour.
A Tesla perp could keep trading through nights and weekends while Tesla shares on Nasdaq are closed, creating a live view of what traders think the company is worth hours, or even days, before the stock itself reopens.
But that has raised concerns among U.S. regulators. Is a perpetual contract tied to a stock a futures product overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or does it belong with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the underlying shares?
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Kalshi already won CFTC approval in May for a bitcoin perpetual contract. The regulator classified it as a futures contract, but warned the structure might not work for every asset class and said perps tied to other kinds of assets should go through individual review.
Not everyone is convinced, however.
Prominent trading firm Citadel Securities told the SEC and CFTC in a Thursday letter that products tied to U.S. public companies should remain under SEC oversight.
Moving them elsewhere could create a "parallel shadow market" disconnected from the surveillance used across U.S. stocks and options, the firm said.
The concern is easy to see with a company like Nvidia or Tesla. An employee with undisclosed earnings information could theoretically trade a perp while the stock market is shut. A company could also release major news during a trading halt while its perpetual contract keeps moving, unless the two markets coordinate.