On May 29, 2026, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved the listing of a Bitcoin perpetual futures contract on Kalshi, a registered US derivatives exchange. Ethereum contracts followed within days. The exchange crossed $1 billion in trading volume within days of launch.

The approval, granted under CFTC Chairman Mike Selig, a Trump appointee confirmed in December 2025, marks the first time the agency has created an affirmative regulatory framework for this class of instrument in the United States. The action was part of a broader coordinated package: in addition to the product approval, the CFTC issued a policy statement and extended interpretive relief permitting futures commission merchants to access foreign-listed perpetual contracts, a step that reshapes how US financial firms interact with offshore perps markets worldwide.

Perpetual futures, commonly called "perps," are derivative contracts that track an asset's price without an expiration date. Traders can hold positions indefinitely, and a mechanism called a funding rate, periodic payments between long and short traders, keeps the contract price anchored to the underlying asset. During volatile periods, funding rates can swing sharply, eroding positions even when a trader's directional bet is correct. Platforms routinely offer leverage of 50x to 100x, meaning a 1% price move in the wrong direction can wipe out an entire position. Studies across global markets suggest that between 70% and 97% of perp traders lose money. The product was first introduced by the crypto exchange BitMEX and its then-CEO Arthur Hayes in 2016 and quickly became the dominant trading instrument in offshore crypto markets.

Global perp volume reached $86 trillion in 2025.

"This morning, the CFTC took historic action to permit the listing of a true bitcoin perpetual contract by a CFTC-registered exchange, charting a path for one of the most liquid segments of the crypto asset markets to exist within the US regulatory framework," Selig said in a statement on the day of the approval. Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara noted the exchange had been working toward the launch since December 2024.

Before US approval, American traders who wanted perp exposure typically used offshore platforms or accessed them through VPNs, routing money to exchanges like Binance, Bybit, and OKX that operate outside US jurisdiction. The CFTC did not issue a blanket rule covering all perpetual structures; instead, it will evaluate each product individually and has so far approved only Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts on Kalshi. Questions about SEC jurisdictional overlap, complex funding mechanisms, and approval of additional asset classes remain open.

The regulatory milestone lands in a world where perp trading is already a mature, and heavily damaging, activity across emerging markets. The social texture of that damage is visible on platforms like TikTok, where young influencers have built followings by flaunting alleged perp trading winnings, including sports cars and luxury villas, presenting a product whose catastrophic downside rarely appears alongside the highlights. Africa provides the most direct illustration of the current moment. On July 6, 2026, VALR, the continent's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, launched more than 200 perpetual futures markets built on Hyperliquid's Layer-1 blockchain, marking the first time a major regulated centralized exchange has natively integrated Hyperliquid's on-chain infrastructure for cross-asset perpetuals. Hyperliquid handles roughly 70 to 80 percent of all on-chain perpetual futures volume globally, which explains the scale of what the integration represents and why the platform was chosen as VALR's back-end.

The integration gives VALR's 1.9 million registered users, as well as approximately 1,900 institutional clients globally, access to perps covering Bitcoin, Ethereum, equities including pre-IPO shares of SpaceX, commodities, forex, and equity indices, all through the regulated interface they already use.

Gianluca Sacco, VALR's COO, described the launch as bringing "24/7 access to crypto, commodities, currencies, and equities" directly inside the VALR app. The framing was deliberate: the regulated wrapper is central to the product's appeal, extending a level of institutional credibility that pure offshore venues do not offer.

VALR holds licenses from South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority and a provisional license from the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. South Africa declared crypto a financial product under the FAIS Act in October 2022, and the FSCA had approved 59 crypto licenses as of March 2024, a record that sets VALR's regulatory standing apart from most exchanges operating elsewhere on the continent. Hyperliquid has permitted access from South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya.

That regulatory foundation does not neutralize the product's underlying risks. African retail users trading perps face compounding hazards: the universal liquidation risk from high leverage, the added volatility of positions denominated across currencies such as the South African rand, Nigerian naira, and Kenyan shilling, limited investor protection mechanisms if a platform fails, and a user base that is in many cases newer to derivatives products than traders in more established markets.

The situation in India runs in a different direction but toward the same risk. A 1% tax deducted at source on every spot crypto transaction, introduced in the 2022 Union Budget, created a strong financial incentive for traders to shift into futures contracts, which carry no equivalent withholding obligation. Futures contracts also allow traders to set off losses against gains, an option that the 2022 rules do not permit for spot transactions, providing a second, independent incentive to move into derivatives. Since July 2025, an 18% goods and services tax on trading fees has widened the cost gap between domestic and offshore venues further, reinforcing the pattern.

The result: more than 80% of India's crypto trading volume now occurs in futures and derivatives. Approximately 72.7% of India's total crypto trading volume has moved to offshore platforms.

The problem is jurisdictional. Under current Indian law, crypto sits in a regulatory gap where neither SEBI nor the Reserve Bank of India has claimed formal authority over crypto derivatives. The impasse reflects a structural standoff at the Financial Stability and Development Council level, where the RBI has formally backed prohibition while SEBI has declined to claim ownership of the asset class. Equity derivatives carry a maximum 5x leverage under SEBI rules. Crypto platforms offer up to 100x with no domestic constraint. SEBI's own study of equity futures and options found that 91% of individual traders lost money in FY25, a figure that likely understates the risk in crypto derivatives given the far higher leverage available. Industry estimates put 70% to 80% of Indian crypto derivatives traders at a net loss.

The US regulatory framework, however incomplete, does not transfer to these markets. Kalshi operates under the full supervisory apparatus of a registered US derivatives exchange. Traders in Nigeria, Kenya, or India accessing perps through offshore platforms or integrated wallets have no equivalent backstop. The CFTC approval may accelerate retail interest globally by lending the product mainstream legitimacy, but the rules behind that legitimacy stop at the US border. A large-scale retail blow-up in any of these markets, driven by leveraged losses on unregulated venues, would most likely produce the same response India's government reached in 2022: a punitive tax or restriction that penalizes all participants rather than a framework that protects them.