Incumbent exchanges warn that never-expiring, highly leveraged contracts born in offshore crypto markets could inject new risk into US derivatives
Perpetual futures spent years as one of crypto’s signature offshore products. They are contracts that never expire, trade every hour of every day, and often come with eye-popping leverage.
The Trump administration wants to bring them home. Some of the most established players in American derivatives are not exactly rolling out the welcome mat.
Four executives at incumbent exchanges and other key market participants told Reuters that perps could introduce serious new risks to the multitrillion-dollar US derivatives market. Their warnings land after regulators have already approved the contracts for both Bitcoin and individual stocks.
What perps are, and why they make people nervous
A traditional futures contract works like a lease. It has a set end date, and positions must be settled or rolled over when that date arrives.
A perpetual future has no end date at all. Traders can hold a position indefinitely, and the market never closes for the night or the weekend.
To keep the contract’s price anchored to the underlying asset, perps rely on a mechanism called a funding rate. It replaces the expiration date as the tool that stops the contract from drifting away from reality.
The bigger worry is leverage. Offshore venues have offered leverage of 50 to 100 times, which means a small deposit can control a very large position.
At 50x, a 2% move against a trader can be enough to wipe out the entire stake.
The other key detail concerns who is trading. Perps are predominantly used by retail investors, not the institutional desks that dominate most regulated futures markets.
How Washington got here
The onshoring push has been led by Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael S. Selig. The agency approved Bitcoin perpetual futures in May 2026, the first time such contracts were cleared for trading on a US-registered exchange.
Single-stock equity perpetual futures followed with CFTC approval on November 3, 2026. That moved perps out of the crypto corner and into the territory of traditional equities.
The scale of the prize helps explain the urgency. Offshore crypto perpetual trading volume hit $61.7 trillion in 2025, up 29% year over year.
Nearly all of that activity happened outside US oversight. The administration’s pitch is simple: if Americans are going to trade these products anyway, the volume might as well run through regulated domestic venues.
In August 2026, President Trump discussed bringing platforms like Hyperliquid, a major decentralized perps venue, onshore.
The incumbents push back in court
The pushback has gone well beyond quotes to reporters. CME Group sued the CFTC in June 2026 over the Bitcoin perps approval.
CME’s argument centers on classification. The exchange operator contends that perpetuals should be treated as swaps, not futures, and that labeling them futures would unfairly harm competition among exchange operators.
The distinction carries real weight. Swaps and futures sit under different regulatory regimes, so the label determines which rules apply and which venues can list the products.
A second legal front opened shortly after the equity perps decision. A group including Cboe and Citadel filed follow-on litigation in early November 2026.
What this means for traders, exchanges, and crypto
Supporters point to guardrails. Regulated US platforms may impose leverage limits of approximately 6x, a far cry from the 50x to 100x commonly available offshore.
Critics see the other side of that coin. Even at reduced leverage, perps combine round-the-clock trading, no expiration, and a heavily retail user base.
Opponents worry that mix could unsettle risk management practices that were built up in the years after the 2008 financial crisis. Those systems were designed around products with defined lifespans and trading hours, and perps have neither.
CME’s own lawsuit frames the issue partly in terms of competitive harm.
Firms such as Kalshi and Robinhood may see increased activity if trading volume shifts toward regulated US venues.
Offshore venues, including decentralized platforms like Hyperliquid, now face the prospect of regulated domestic competition for US users. How much of that $61.7 trillion in offshore activity actually migrates will depend on whether traders accept lower leverage in exchange for regulatory protection.
The near-term variable to watch is the courts. If CME succeeds in having perpetuals classified as swaps, the regulatory foundation for the CFTC’s approvals could be thrown into question.
The Cboe and Citadel case adds a second track that targets the equity perps approval directly.
Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
