Key Insights:
- Perps trading is entering regulated US markets.
- Stock perp volume rose 56x between January and August.
Jamie Selway, senior SEC official, said that he expects at least four exchanges to begin trading perpetual futures on securities before the end of the quarter. Five CFTC-regulated exchanges, Coinbase, Kalshi, Bitnomial, NADEX and ICE Futures, filed Form 1-N registration notices with the SEC in September.
Perpetual futures are derivatives with no expiry date, and they were developed in crypto markets. Perps trading in stocks, metals, and indices already runs on-chain and on offshore exchanges.
How Perps Trading Is Entering Regulated US Markets
The September filings are just a registration step rather than regulatory approval. An eligible exchange’s registration takes effect upon submission, and it only applies to security futures products, not cash equities.
Selway did not identify the four exchanges or provide details on launch dates, eligible stocks, leverage limits, funding arrangements, or settlement terms. He said the SEC’s role is to ensure compliance and promote competition, rather than check whether a product is likely to succeed commercially.
Kalshi has moved the fastest. It launched a US 500 perpetual future on Oct. 6, within 49 days after filing with the CFTC on Aug. 18. It also launched gold and silver perps on Sept. 10, the first non-crypto perpetual contracts. CNBC also reported that shares of Cboe and CME Group fell after perps launched, on concern that the product could disrupt their businesses. Coinbase has also offered stock perps to eligible customers outside the US since March and filed on Sept. 18 to list US versions.
Perps Trading Volume Is Growing Fast Outside the US
Stock perpetual futures volume on centralized crypto exchanges reached $665.42 billion in August, up 4.6% from July and 56 times the January level, according to WuBlockchain Data Center data.
Onchain, Hyperliquid’s HIP-3 framework lets builders deploy perps on stocks, commodities and indices. Hyperliquid does not list the contracts itself, which describes them as builder-deployed markets. The largest deployer, trade.xyz, had 91 equity markets listed as of Oct. 6, according to HyperliquidGuide, a third-party tracker.
Hyperliquid is not the only onchain venue. Aster has also offered stock perps, including Apple and Tesla at up to 50x leverage, according to 21Shares. In a recent 30-day period, Hyperliquid handled $177.79 billion in derivatives volume, or 68.5% of the main perp DEXs, per DefiLlama data.
Aster followed with $38.88 billion (15%) and Lighter with $34.09 billion (13.1%). Jupiter Perps and GMX were far smaller, at $4.47 billion and $2.48 billion. These figures cover all perps, not only stock perps.
Share numbers differ by period and source. Moreover, in 2025, 21Shares noted that some of Aster’s volume may be inflated by incentives.
Outlook: Will Perps Trading Get Much Bigger?
Three main factors that could drive strong growth in perps trading. US-regulated platforms are now preparing to launch these products, and the range of assets is stretching from crypto to stocks, metals, and indices, and trading data shows decent demand for leveraged exposure outside regular market hours. However, the available data support the growing trend but do not indicate how large the market could become.
According to Oak Research and Yahoo Finance, onchain perps can be traded around the clock without a brokerage account. This allows traders in one country to trade the stock listed in another. According to Cryptonomist, SK Hynix, a South Korean-listed stock, was among the three most-traded stock perps on crypto exchanges in August.
Perps are quickly moving beyond crypto trading and are now becoming a part of the regulatory discussion. However, Selway’s expectation of the launch of perp products on various exchanges in the fourth-quarter timeline is not a confirmed commitment from any exchange.
The next key developments will be the first US launches of single-stock perps, for which no dates have been confirmed.
