Coinbase has asked the US commodities regulator, the CFTC, for approval to launch perpetual futures on individual stocks. The filing was submitted Friday, Sept. 18, through its Coinbase Derivatives unit and now awaits a decision. The contracts would give American traders access to stock prices 24 hours a day, five days a week, without buying the shares themselves.
What Coinbase filed
According to the CFTC listing, the contracts fall under single-stock futures, and their status is marked "approval pending". Coinbase itself called the filing its "first set" of US stock perpetuals. The company said they would build on its existing US perpetual futures market.
A perpetual future, or perp, tracks an asset's price and has no expiry date. A trader holds the position as long as margin lasts and the funding rate is paid. That rate is a periodic payment between holders of long and short positions that keeps the contract price near the price of the underlying asset. In crypto trading it is among the most common instruments, but American traders were shut out of most forms of it until recently.
It is the second regulatory step this month. On Sept. 1, Coinbase Derivatives filed Form 1-N with the SEC to register as a national securities exchange and offer security futures.
The filing followed a failed vote in Congress. On Tuesday the Senate fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the CLARITY Act, a market-structure bill meant to split oversight between the CFTC and the SEC. The same week the CFTC sent a draft rule titled "Regulation Crypto Asset Transactions and Regulation Crypto Asset Markets" to the White House regulatory office (OIRA) for early review.
Which stocks made the list
The Wall Street Journal reported that Coinbase plans 50 to 60 contracts at launch. Named companies include Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia. A launch is possible later this year if regulators sign off.
What is known about the product so far:
- Trading runs 24 hours a day, five days a week.
- The launch lineup is planned at 50-60 stocks, among them Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia.
- The contract has no end date, and a position requires margin and payment of the funding rate.
- Exact contract specifications and multiplier limits have not been disclosed.
In February Coinbase opened access in the US to regulated crypto futures and 24/5 trading of ordinary stocks. This year it also became the first US exchange cleared to offer regulated crypto perpetuals, and then rolled out versions with a multiplier of up to 50x. The company has not named comparable figures for the stock contracts.
Who else is entering the perpetuals market
Outside the US, Coinbase already offers stock contracts to eligible traders. The product launched in March and tracks large American companies and indexes, including Apple and Nvidia. It was unavailable to US residents, and the company said it wanted to widen the geography.
Competitors are also heading for the American market. The CFTC approved Bitcoin perpetual futures for Kalshi, which has since added commodity contracts such as copper. Polymarket is moving toward its own crypto perpetuals.
The OG.com exchange, tied to Crypto.com, received SEC acknowledgment of its Form 1-N and can offer single-stock futures in the US. Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek announced it on X on Sept. 17. The exchange's legal entity, North American Derivatives Exchange, filed the form on Monday. The same day the SEC approved a temporary exemption allowing limited trading of tokenized US stocks on certain onchain venues, with limits by symbol and volume.
On derivatives exchanges, perpetual contracts now cover currency pairs too. Binance launches USDBRLUSDT on Sept. 21, a dollar-to-Brazilian-real pair settled in USDT with a multiplier of up to 100x. On weekends and holidays the price will come from the order book, while in regular hours it will follow an index from third-party data providers. Binance trading head Shunyet Jan said the launch is meant to extend price discovery beyond regular currency-market hours and give traders a venue to hedge. Less than two weeks earlier Bybit opened round-the-clock perps on EUR/USD, GBP/USD and USD/JPY, and Kraken offered contracts on the euro, pound, Australian dollar, yen and Swiss franc back in April 2025 with up to 50x. That exchange has traded spot currencies since 2020, and its spot volume reached $5.7 billion in the first part of 2025.
The currency market is the largest in the world. According to the Bank for International Settlements, daily turnover in April 2025 reached $9.6 trillion.
What is still undecided
The CFTC has not ruled yet, so the launch date stays open. Coinbase has not published full specifications or multiplier limits, and the stock list is known only from the WSJ report. Next comes the regulators' response to this filing and to the registration of Coinbase Derivatives as a securities exchange.
The regulatory calendar is also unclear. The CFTC sent only an early stage of the draft rule, the text has not been published, and specific provisions are unknown. Sen. Cynthia Lummis rated the CLARITY Act's chances this year as slim, though some colleagues said they will keep pushing the bill. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has earlier pointed to agency rules as the fallback if the law stalls.
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