Coinbase has filed two SEC notice registrations seeking permission to offer single-stock perpetual contracts to US investors. The filings, submitted on September 1 through its regulated derivatives units, could open a new product category for the exchange if regulators approve. The notices do not name specific stocks, set a launch date, or propose leverage limits.
Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad confirmed the move in a September 3 post on X, calling it “the first step toward offering equity perpetuals domestically.” He said single-stock perpetuals have already shown strong demand in international markets, where exchanges like Bybit and OKX operate the product offshore.
The two filings establish a regulatory route that goes through both the SEC and CFTC. Coinbase Derivatives, LLC, the exchange’s derivatives arm, filed Form 1-N to register as a security futures exchange. Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. submitted Form BD-N as a limited-purpose security futures broker-dealer. Both filings are dated September 1. Single-stock futures in the US fall under the joint oversight of both agencies.
What the filings do and do not say
The Form 1-N allows an exchange already regulated by the CFTC to register with the SEC for the sole purpose of trading security futures products. Coinbase Derivatives has operated as a CFTC-designated contract market since 2020, according to regulatory disclosures. The dual filing structure mirrors how some options exchanges already operate, where both agencies maintain oversight of the same product type.
Neither filing addresses whether the perpetuals would trade around the clock. US equity markets run 9:30 AM to 4 PM ET on business days. Perpetual contracts, by definition, have no expiry date. International perpetuals often trade 24/7, but the SEC has not yet stated whether that model would work for single-stock products in the US.
Coinbase’s own international risk disclosure warns of liquidity, execution, and price-volatility risks that increase outside regular stock-market hours. Spreads can widen, slippage increases, and the absence of market makers during off-hours means larger trades can move prices more than they would during the New York session. The SEC would need to consider how those risks apply when the underlying companies are not actively trading.
Perpetuals are not new, but the US market is
Crypto perpetual swaps have been the dominant derivative product on offshore exchanges for years. Binance, OKX, and Bybit all list perpetuals with leverage of up to 125x on major tokens. Applying the same structure to equities would let traders maintain leveraged positions on individual stocks without rolling expiring futures contracts.
The perpetual swap format solves a problem that has plagued single-stock futures in the US. The only previous attempt at single-stock futures, through the OneChicago exchange, failed in the 2010s partly because the contracts expired monthly and required constant rollover. Perpetuals eliminate that friction by replacing the rollover mechanism with a periodic funding rate that keeps the contract price aligned with the underlying asset.
On September 3, Polymarket announced it was adding 20x perpetuals for crypto, stocks, and gold on its prediction market platform, further signaling demand for the product across multiple asset classes. The CLARITY Act, a US crypto market-structure bill expected to move toward a Senate vote on September 15, could also affect how these products are classified under federal securities law.
Competition from traditional finance
Coinbase faces competition from traditional finance. CME Group, the largest derivatives exchange by volume, has offered crypto futures since 2017 and expanded into options on major tokens. In August, the CFTC asked a federal court to dismiss CME’s lawsuit challenging Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetual futures, calling the case “much ado about nothing.” The CFTC argued that Kalshi, as a CFTC-regulated exchange, had the authority to list prediction-style contracts.
Kraken, meanwhile, continues to delay its own IPO. Payward, the crypto exchange’s parent company, pushed its public listing to Q2 2027 at the earliest, citing unfavorable market conditions for digital-asset stock valuations. The delay highlights the gap between crypto-native firms’ ambitions and public market appetite.
A familiar regulatory playbook
The perpetuals filing is the latest in a series of regulatory moves by Coinbase. In April, the exchange received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust charter. The company has filed 14 other regulatory applications in 2026, according to public records, covering custody, derivatives, and banking activities.
Coinbase Derivatives has already been offering nano Bitcoin futures and nano Ether futures since mid-2024, products designed to compete directly with CME’s larger contracts. Expanding into equity perpetuals would mark the first time the exchange has moved into territory traditionally held by stock exchanges like NYSE and Nasdaq.
The filings come at a time when the SEC under Chair Paul Atkins has shown more willingness to engage with crypto-native firms. The agency proposed modernizing transfer agent rules for the first time in 40 years on September 1, a move that would accommodate blockchain-native transfer agents and tokenized securities. Several fintech firms, including Revolut and Circle, have received conditional OCC approvals in 2026.
Whether the SEC will approve the perpetuals filings remains an open question. The agency has historically been cautious about novel derivative structures, especially when they involve leverage and off-hours trading. But the current regulatory environment has shifted in favor of crypto-native firms, and the OCC has approved 21 out of 40 charter applications since 2025.
The product, if approved, would also raise questions about how market regulators handle conflicts of interest. Coinbase both lists and trades perpetuals on its platform, similar to how Robinhood has faced scrutiny for its payment-for-order-flow model in equities. The SEC and CFTC would need to determine whether the existing regulatory framework adequately addresses those concerns for a new product category.
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