The registration was filed by the North American Derivatives Exchange (Nadex), a CFTC-regulated designated contract market (DCM) that Crypto.com acquired from IG Group along with the Small Exchange. Crypto.com now operates Nadex under its Crypto.com Derivatives North America and OG.com brands. Nadex's existing DCM status gave Crypto.com a ready-made regulatory infrastructure. That acquisition, combined with Crypto.com's September 2025 CFTC licensing that included Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) status, provided the necessary foundation for operating a regulated derivatives business in the United States and made the Form 1-N notice registration pathway available to the company.

The SEC acknowledged the Form 1-N filing on September 16, two days after it became effective. Under this regulatory pathway, no discretionary SEC approval is required; the notice registration carries legal force on its own.

CEO Kris Marszalek confirmed the milestone on September 17, saying the company is focused on "bringing single-stock perpetual contracts to the US market in coordination with both the SEC and the CFTC."

Two products, two different regulatory statuses. Standard single-stock futures (fixed-expiry contracts tied to the price of individual company shares) are now cleared to move toward launch. Single-stock perpetual futures, which have no expiration date and use a funding rate mechanism to track spot prices, remain in regulatory review.

Because perpetual futures on equities sit at the boundary between securities and commodities law, they require coordination between the SEC and the CFTC. That boundary was sharpened on March 17, 2026, when the two agencies jointly issued a crypto asset taxonomy clarifying which digital assets fall under each agency's jurisdiction. On the CFTC side, the agency established its framework for perpetual futures through three coordinated actions in May 2026: it approved the first US-listed perpetual contract (BTCPERP) on KalshiEX, issued a Policy Statement establishing a formal review framework for future submissions, and provided no-action relief through Letter 26-17 allowing futures commission merchants to facilitate access to foreign-listed perps. The KalshiEX approval covered digital commodities like Bitcoin; equity-linked perps require separate, case-by-case review under CFTC Regulation 40.3, a process the Policy Statement formally established.

Crypto.com has not disclosed a launch timeline, the list of underlying stocks, or planned leverage limits.

Crypto.com is not the first mover here. Coinbase filed its own SEC notice registration for single-stock perpetual futures on September 1, roughly two weeks before Crypto.com's filing took effect.

Coinbase Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad described the rationale plainly: "Equity perps have proven demand internationally" (via X).

Coinbase had already launched stock perps for international users in March 2026, covering Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon. Kalshi has separately filed with the CFTC for equity index perpetuals. On September 16, Kraken's parent company Payward announced plans to offer US clients on-chain perpetual futures through Bitnomial using the Hyperliquid protocol.

The competitive dynamic is clear: multiple exchanges are racing to capture a US market that barely existed a year ago.

The scale of what is moving onshore. Perpetual futures currently account for roughly 78 percent of all crypto derivatives volume globally, with offshore platforms processing more than 200 billion dollars per day before the US regulatory shift began.

Over the six-month period ending February 2026, offshore perp volume totaled an estimated 14 trillion dollars.

US-listed perpetual futures volume grew from approximately 52 billion dollars per month in January 2026 to around 268 billion dollars by June, a fivefold increase in six months.

CME Group, the world's largest derivatives exchange, listed more than 55 single-stock futures contracts in July 2026, signaling strong institutional appetite for the product type.

For users outside the United States, the picture is more complicated. Crypto.com launched tokenized stock derivatives for users in the European Economic Area and other approved jurisdictions in August 2026, offering exposure to 1,500 underlying stocks starting at one dollar.

Whether that list of approved jurisdictions includes markets in South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa is not yet clear from public disclosures.

For now, most retail traders in India, Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa continue to access perpetual futures through offshore platforms such as Binance, Bybit, and OKX, which offer leverage as high as 125x. US-regulated perps are expected to cap leverage at 10 to 20 times, a constraint that reduces risk but also reduces the speculative appeal that draws retail users in currency-stressed economies toward offshore venues in the first place.

Regulatory momentum is building at the regional level regardless. South Africa reclassified crypto assets as capital in 2026, and new South African Reserve Bank rules will require prior approval for cross-border crypto transfers, a forthcoming change that will affect how South African users access offshore derivative platforms.

VALR, the country's largest exchange, secured a derivatives license under the Financial Markets Act in October 2025.

Nigeria and Kenya are both developing formal virtual asset frameworks, though neither has addressed crypto-native equity derivatives specifically. Kenya's March 2026 VASP Regulations, for instance, focus specifically on stablecoin issuers rather than broader derivative products.

India's 30 percent flat tax on digital asset profits and 1% TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) remain in place, and neither SEBI nor the RBI has issued guidance on crypto-linked stock derivatives.

A regulated US precedent may intensify domestic debate in each of these markets.

Crypto.com's Cronos (CRO) token carries a market capitalization of approximately 2.79 billion dollars, ranking around 37th by market cap as of this writing.

The Cronos network has recorded more than 150 million transactions, serves approximately 1.8 million on-chain users, and holds roughly 500 million dollars in total value locked.

The regulatory progress announced today provides a credibility signal for the broader platform, but the practical business impact depends on whether Crypto.com can bring its stock futures to market ahead of competitors and whether regulators ultimately clear the perpetual contracts that represent the larger commercial prize.