Coinbase Derivatives has filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for approval to launch cash-settled perpetual futures tied to individual US-listed stocks and ETFs, but the contracts cannot trade yet. A CFTC product register checked Tuesday still listed the Single Stock Perpetual Futures Contract as approval pending, five days after the filing appeared.
An SEC notice published September 18 shows Coinbase submitted the proposed rule change to the CFTC, which has not approved it. The filing describes a framework, not a live product. Until the regulator acts and Coinbase files final contract terms, traders in the United States have no access to anything. The gap between the announcement and reality has already produced confusion, with some aggregators describing the product as available within hours of the SEC notice appearing.
How the contracts would work
If approved, the products would be cash-settled, meaning gains and losses resolve in money payments rather than share delivery. Traders would get price exposure to a stock or ETF without holding the underlying security or receiving any ownership rights, including dividends. Anyone wanting the economics of a leveraged equity position without a brokerage margin account would be the target user.
Positions would carry funding payments, the mechanism that keeps perpetual contract prices tethered to the underlying stock. The framework sets no universal rate. Each product appendix would define the funding methodology, payment mechanics, interval and publication timing. That differs from crypto perps, where funding typically exchanges hands every few hours based on the spread between the contract and spot price.
Trading would run Sunday 8 p.m. Eastern through Friday 5 p.m. Eastern, with holidays, maintenance windows and regulatory halts able to interrupt the schedule. That is wider than stock market hours but not the round-the-clock availability crypto traders know. Coinbase described the hours as 24/5-style exposure in its own announcement.
Apple would serve as the initial underlying security for the first contract, according to coverage of the filing. The company has not published the full list of stocks and ETFs it intends to list, nor a fee schedule. Leverage limits have not been disclosed either, and those numbers will matter to both retail traders and the CFTC reviewers assessing the risk profile of each contract.
Why the timing matters
The filing lands in a crowded field. Coinbase already offers crypto perpetual-style futures to US users through Coinbase Financial Markets, and stock perps covering the Mag Seven stocks, SPY and QQQ to non-US customers on Coinbase International Exchange since March. Kraken runs xStocks perpetuals for overseas customers covering a wider set of individual stocks. Kalshi and Polymarket compete for adjacent event-contract volume, and the CFTC recently filed a court brief supporting Crypto.com against state-level challenges to prediction markets.
Bringing stock perps onshore would let American retail traders hold leveraged, always-on equity exposure inside a CFTC-regulated venue. US traders currently route around the gap through offshore venues, which carry counterparty and legal risk, or accept capped, dated single-stock futures at CME. A no-expiry cash-settled product with extended hours would compress that workaround and pull volume that currently sits offshore back into US jurisdiction.
The regulatory bottleneck
The CFTC under Chairman Michael Selig has taken a broadly permissive line on novel derivatives. But the agency approval clock for the Coinbase filing has not visibly moved since September 18, and the register still shows pending status. Register entries do not come with deadlines, so the wait could stretch for weeks. The agency may also open the proposal to public comment before deciding, which would add more time.
The distinction matters because premature claims of approval have already circulated. The SEC filing is a procedural step that merely publishes the proposal. No launch date, contract list or fee schedule has been published. Coinbase own announcement was worded prospectively, saying it had filed and was working to bring the product to the US market.
Coinbase said it had filed and was working to bring the stock perpetuals product to the US market.
Coinbase acquired Deribit in 2025 and has pushed hard into derivatives, which now form a large share of its trading revenue. A US stock-perps franchise would extend that push beyond crypto collateral into mainstream equity exposure and put it in direct competition with CME dated single-stock futures. It would also hand Coinbase a product line that Traditional brokerages do not offer, giving it a retention hook with active traders who currently split their activity between a broker and an offshore perps venue.
For the broader market, approval would blur the line between crypto-native derivatives infrastructure and traditional equity derivatives. Funding-rate mechanics, long standard in crypto, would become part of how ordinary investors trade stocks. Regulators in other jurisdictions, including the EU and Singapore, are watching how the CFTC handles the filing before deciding whether to permit similar products domestically.
There is also a consumer-protection angle. Perpetual futures with leverage have produced heavy retail losses in crypto, and equity perps would expose a much larger population of traders to the same mechanics. The CFTC has historically required risk disclosures and position limits on leveraged retail products. How it applies those tools here, or whether it asks Coinbase to cap leverage on single names, will shape whether other exchanges follow with filings of their own.
What to watch next: any movement on the CFTC product register, contract-specific filings from Coinbase Derivatives naming underlying stocks and funding terms, and whether the agency requests public comment on the rule change. Until then, the product is a proposal on paper, and claims that it is live are wrong.