Coinbase has asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to approve perpetual futures on individual US stocks, a product that until now lived almost entirely on offshore crypto exchanges. The filing through Coinbase Derivatives names Apple, Tesla and Nvidia as the first underliers, and the exchange’s own stock jumped 12 percent on the news Friday, according to Forbes and KuCoin.
Coinbase used the Part 40 certification route, which lets a contract market self-certify a new product unless the CFTC objects within a set window. That path is faster than a full approval process and has been the standard entry point for crypto derivatives listed on US-regulated venues. Perpetual futures are contracts without an expiry date that track an underlying asset through funding payments between long and short holders. They are the most traded product in crypto, but single-stock versions have been available to US retail traders only through offshore venues that US regulators have spent years chasing.
A regulated version of an offshore product
The move follows a pattern Coinbase has pursued for years: take the most popular offshore crypto products and rebuild them inside US regulation. The exchange did it with regulated spot trading, with USDC, with US-perpetual-style futures on crypto, and now with equity underliers. Holder.io reported the filing covers perpetuals tied to Apple, Tesla and Nvidia through the Part 40 certification route.
Kalshi, the prediction-market platform, has also filed to offer similar perpetual futures on large-cap stocks, so Coinbase is not alone in pushing the product line. The timing overlaps with a court fight that will shape the whole category: CME Group sued the CFTC over its approval of crypto perpetual futures, and the agency’s lawyers filed to dismiss the case, calling the lawsuit “much ado about nothing” and arguing CME lacks standing. That dispute heads to court with the single-stock perps question now layered on top.
Market reaction and context
Coinbase shares closed the week strongly. The 12 percent jump came as part of the best session for crypto-linked equities in months, with Coinbase closing at $194.25, Strategy up 16.4 percent to $153.92, Robinhood up 9.1 percent to $119.82 and Circle up 7.9 percent to $91.78 on Friday, per Yahoo Finance data. The rally reflected a broader read that US regulators, from the SEC’s tokenized-stock exemption earlier in the week to the CFTC’s permissive posture on derivatives, are opening doors rather than closing them.
The derivatives business matters to Coinbase’s revenue mix. Institutional and retail derivatives have grown into one of the exchange’s fastest-expanding lines, and single-stock perps would let it compete directly with offshore platforms like Bybit and Binance for a product category that generates enormous global volume. Offshore exchanges estimate crypto perpetuals trade in the hundreds of billions of dollars daily; equity underliers would extend that user base beyond crypto-native traders to the much larger pool of people who already trade Apple or Nvidia but have never touched an offshore crypto venue.
The demand side is not theoretical. Bitcoin’s push above $85,000 on Monday forced out $648 million of short positions in 24 hours, per Coinglass data cited by CoinDesk, and open interest climbed to $156 billion even as positions closed. Leveraged, always-on trading is where the volume lives, and equities are the largest untapped collateral class for it.
What the CFTC must decide
Part 40 certification puts the burden on the agency to object. If the CFTC does not act within the review window, the contracts can list. The commission has been restructuring its approach to perpetuals all year, having published new crypto rules with the White House in recent days, per Forbes. Observers will watch for three things: whether the certification clears without objection, whether CME’s lawsuit freezes or speeds the broader perps agenda, and whether equity issuers like Apple raise objections similar to those embedded in the SEC’s tokenized-stock framework, which gives companies 30 days to veto tokenized versions of their shares.
There is also a structural question. Perpetual futures are derivatives, so they do not transfer ownership or voting rights, unlike the SEC’s tokenized-stock pathway. That makes the CFTC product legally simpler but economically riskier for retail traders, since perpetuals embed leverage and funding costs that stock tokens do not. US derivatives rules would apply position limits and margin requirements that offshore venues largely skip, which changes the risk profile of the same product name.
Competition is the third variable. Kalshi’s parallel filing means at least two platforms want the category, and CME, the incumbent futures giant, is litigating against crypto perps while reportedly weighing equity versions of its own. If Coinbase clears certification first, it gets the marketing win of being first to market with a product US traders have used only through unregulated channels, a position that historically converts into durable liquidity share because market makers concentrate where volume already sits.
The broker channel adds another layer. Robinhood, which offers crypto trading to tens of millions of retail accounts, could distribute regulated equity perps to a user base offshore venues cannot legally touch in the US, either through its own derivatives arm or through partnerships. That distribution advantage is what analysts at Goldman Sachs and Citizens flagged when they named Coinbase and Robinhood early winners of the week’s regulatory shifts.
If the listing goes ahead, the first US-regulated single-stock perpetuals would land in a market already primed. Hyperliquid, the largest decentralized perps venue, just recorded $16.36 billion in open interest and launched manual borrowing against HYPE collateral. Demand for leveraged, always-on exposure to major assets, whether crypto or equities, is not in doubt. The open question is how much of it US regulators will let onshore, and how fast.