What happened
Kalshi, the New York-based prediction market operator that won its CFTC event-contract fight last year, is preparing to file for approval of a WTI crude oil perpetual futures contract, Cointelegraph reported Wednesday citing sources familiar with the plan. The contract would trade 24 hours a day, five days a week, with no set expiration, according to the report. That structure is standard on Binance, Bybit, and OKX for crypto pairs.
It has never existed on a CFTC-registered U. S. venue.
Kalshi has not publicly confirmed the filing, and the CFTC's public docket did not show a Part 40 submission for the product as of Wednesday morning. The company's push into commodity derivatives comes months after it expanded from political and sports event contracts into broader market instruments, backed by a $185 million Series C led by Paradigm.
Why it matters
Perpetual futures are the single most-traded instrument in crypto. Offshore venues clear more than $150 billion in perp volume on an average day, dwarfing spot and dated futures combined. Every attempt to bring the structure onshore has stalled at the regulatory layer.
Funding-rate mechanics, no expiry, and continuous mark-to-market sat awkwardly against the CFTC's dated-contract framework. A Kalshi approval would break that logjam. It would set a template other DCMs could copy.
That matters directly for crypto because the same filing pathway, if it works for WTI, is the pathway for a regulated BTC or ETH perp. Coinbase, CME, and Bitnomial have all been quietly probing the same question. Kalshi getting there first would reset the competitive map.