Kalshi filed for two perpetual futures contracts tied to the S&P 500 and copper, pushing crypto's signature derivatives product into traditional markets.
Kalshi wants to take a product built in crypto into equities and metals. On August 18, the federally regulated exchange filed two proposals with the CFTC seeking approval for perpetual futures tied to a major US stock index and copper. If the agency signs off, the contracts would bring a structure that crypto traders have used for years to traditional assets.
Perpetual futures, or perps, account for roughly 93% of all crypto derivatives trading, according to Cornell University researchers. Traders can hold leveraged positions without rolling contracts at expiration. Regular funding payments keep the price aligned with the underlying market. Economist Robert Shiller proposed a perpetual futures structure back in 1993. Crypto turned the idea into a mass-market product.
Kalshi's US500 contract tracks the MerQube US Large Cap Index, a float-adjusted market-cap weighted index of the 500 largest US-listed companies. The COPPERPERP contract prices copper in dollars per pound using the XCU/USD feed from the Pyth Network. Neither product has been approved. The filings fall under CFTC Regulation 40.3, which requires the agency's sign-off before launch.
The filings extend Kalshi's push into perpetuals after the CFTC cleared its bitcoin perp on May 29. BTCPERP went live on June 3, followed by Ether on June 4 and XRP on June 10. Kalshi now offers perpetuals across 13 cryptocurrencies, according to Cryptopolitan. The exchange's daily open interest hit an all-time high of $17.98 million on August 12. By comparison, Hyperliquid had about $11.7 billion in open interest across 377 trading pairs, making Kalshi roughly 0.15% of that size.
Kalshi's perp business has grown fast. The contracts hit $1 billion in notional volume within a week of launch. It took Kalshi's event-contract business about 40 months to reach that same mark.
A legal challenge hangs over the expansion. CME Group sued the CFTC and Chairman Michael Selig in June, arguing the agency violated the Commodity Exchange Act when it approved Kalshi's and Coinbase's perpetual futures in May. CME says the products should be classified as swaps, not futures. The outcome of that lawsuit, along with the CFTC's review of the August filings, will determine whether US500 and COPPERPERP ever reach the market.
Coinbase Institutional, in its 2026 Crypto Market Outlook report, argued that equity perps could become the preferred choice for a new generation of retail traders, citing constant accessibility and efficient capital use. The report said perps are no longer just leveraged products but are becoming components of lending, collateral, and hedging systems. If regulated US exchanges can list perps on stocks and commodities, crypto will have exported one of its most effective market structures to traditional finance.
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