CFTC headquarters entrance in Washington as regulators consider U.S. perpetual markets

The Push to Bring Crypto Perpetuals Onshore Is Getting Harder for Washington to Ignore

By Isaac • August 31, 2026 7:09 pm • Comments

Washington is no longer debating perpetual contracts as a niche product that can be left to offshore crypto exchanges. The fight has moved to a harder question: what would a workable American market actually look like?

A bipartisan group of former SEC and CFTC officials is urging the agencies to avoid overlapping rules that could make regulated U.S. perpetual markets uneconomic before they begin. Their intervention adds to a broader industry campaign asking regulators to bring the trading, liquidity and market data onshore.

Decrypt reported that former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, former commissioners Brian Quintenz and Sharon Brown-Hruska, former SEC Commissioner Steven Wallman and former SEC chief economist Chester Spatt signed a comment letter focused on consistent, risk-based treatment. The letter was sponsored by Kalshi, but the signers said they were not paid and that Kalshi did not control its contents.

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Unlike conventional futures, perpetual contracts do not expire. Funding payments help keep their prices aligned with the underlying market, allowing traders to maintain exposure without repeatedly rolling into a new contract.

That structure has become one of crypto’s dominant trading formats. The policy argument is that keeping it offshore does not eliminate leverage or speculation; it simply moves those risks outside U.S. surveillance, customer-protection and reporting systems.

The Crypto Council for Innovation argues that the CFTC can review perpetual contracts under its existing framework on a contract-by-contract basis. Its August 27 submission covered continuous standard futures and perpetual contracts, with an emphasis on risk management and price discovery.

The group asked the agency to look at the underlying market’s characteristics instead of treating every perpetual product as one undifferentiated category. That approach would let regulators set market-specific conditions while using familiar derivatives-law tools for margin, clearing, surveillance and customer protection.

The filing arrived as the CFTC studies round-the-clock futures trading and perpetual contracts beyond the products already associated with crypto markets. It also raised energy contracts as a test of whether existing oversight can accommodate nonstop trading without discarding protections built around the underlying commodity.

That distinction matters for crypto because a workable rulebook could establish the treatment of funding payments, reference prices and continuous risk controls before more venues seek approval. It would also give market participants clearer standards for deciding whether a proposed contract belongs inside the regulated U.S. system.

Crypto perpetuals tied to assets such as Bitcoin are primarily a CFTC issue. Equity perpetuals are more complicated because they can implicate both securities and commodities law.

The Blockchain Association’s proposal points to the existing joint framework for security futures as a possible route. Its case is that coordinated rules could bring price discovery and liquidity under U.S. oversight while preserving standards for disclosures, surveillance, customer assets and operational resilience.

None of that makes perpetuals low-risk. Continuous markets can magnify leverage, liquidation cascades and operational failures.

A credible U.S. regime would still need clear margin rules and reliable reference prices. Strong custody, segregation requirements and real cross-market surveillance would also be essential.

But the policy momentum is becoming obvious. The question is shifting from whether Americans want access to perpetual markets to whether regulators can design rules that pull meaningful liquidity onshore.

If the SEC and CFTC layer conflicting obligations on the same product, the offshore advantage survives. If they coordinate, one of crypto’s largest markets could finally begin moving into the U.S. regulatory perimeter.

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