Coinbase has filed notice registrations with the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking clearance to list perpetual futures on individual stocks for US customers.
Chief Policy Officer Faryar Shirzad disclosed the filings in a post on X on September 3. Coinbase Derivatives LLC submitted a Form 1-N, while Coinbase Financial Markets Inc. filed a Form BD-N as a security futures broker-dealer. Both filings are dated September 1 and were submitted under provisions of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, the law that established joint SEC-CFTC oversight of security futures products for the first time.
The filing is the first step in a two-agency process. SEC registration establishes the regulatory framework, but CFTC product approval is required before any trading can begin. Coinbase has not said which stocks it would list domestically, what leverage it would allow, or when trading might start. The process could take months or longer depending on regulatory review and any challenges from market participants.
Perpetuals move from offshore to regulated
Perpetual futures dominate offshore crypto trading. They are expiry-free, funding-rate-tethered contracts that let traders hold leveraged positions indefinitely without rolling contracts forward. Extending them to single stock names would let US traders take leveraged long or short positions on Apple or Nvidia around the clock. That would compete directly with listed options and with the offshore venues where the volume currently sits.
Coinbase launched single-stock perpetuals for non-US customers in March, covering names including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Amazon. The offshore product operates with up to 20x leverage. Shirzad described demand for equity perps as proven internationally, and said Coinbase is seeking to fold the product into its regulated derivatives stack where it already offers crypto futures and margined trading.
The competitive landscape is shifting fast. Kalshi has reportedly filed with the CFTC to list equity index perpetuals, pushing the prediction market operator into closer competition with incumbent exchanges. The CFTC opened the door in May when staff cleared Kalshi’s BTCPERP contract and issued a no-action letter allowing Coinbase Financial Markets to route US clients into perpetuals listed on Coinbase’s Bermuda venue as foreign futures. Political pressure is pushing the same direction. President Donald Trump said at the White House in August that CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring the offshore perpetuals platform Hyperliquid onshore in a compliant way.
Classification fight moves through courts
The legal question underneath all of this remains in court. CME Group sued the CFTC in June, arguing that perpetual futures involve two parties exchanging ongoing payments and therefore meet the Dodd-Frank definition of a swap rather than a future. The CFTC asked a judge to dismiss the suit on September 2, telling the court that CME cannot claim competitive injury because nothing prevents it from listing perpetuals itself. A CFTC motion called the competitive harm CME alleged much ado about nothing.
Hyperliquid Labs is in talks to enter the US through a deal with Payward, Kraken’s parent company. If the CME lawsuit fails to halt the regulatory push, the domestic perpetuals market could see multiple entrants within months.
A narrow regulatory path
The Form 1-N filing by Coinbase Derivatives is a notice registration form that allows an exchange already regulated by the CFTC as a designated contract market to register with the SEC for the specific purpose of trading security futures products. This is a narrower path than seeking entirely new regulatory authority, and it places the proposed contracts under the dual-oversight framework that Congress established for security futures in 2000.
Coinbase’s approach proposes classifying equity perpetual contracts as security futures under existing law. This lets the company pursue a known regulatory framework rather than asking regulators to create something entirely new. The SEC and CFTC will ultimately determine how the filings and proposed products are treated within the existing framework.
The filings carry significance beyond Coinbase. If approved, they would establish a precedent for regulated single-stock perpetual futures in the US, a product class that has thrived offshore for years but has never been available to American retail investors under domestic regulatory oversight. The question is whether regulators will move quickly enough to capture the demand before it flows back offshore to unregulated venues.
The move also raises questions about market structure. US equity markets currently operate on a 6.5-hour trading day with circuit breakers and Regulation SHO constraints on short selling. Perpetual futures on individual stocks would offer around-the-clock trading with no locate requirement, creating a parallel market that operates under different rules than the NYSE or Nasdaq.
Coinbase reported $1.5 billion in total revenue in its most recent quarter, with derivatives trading representing a growing share of volume. The company’s international exchange has processed billions in perpetual futures volume since launching the product for non-US customers, giving it a track record to present to regulators as it seeks domestic approval.
On September 9, Coinbase is migrating all perpetual futures positions held on Coinbase International Exchange to Deribit. For most retail users, the transition happens automatically in the background. The migration clears the international book as Coinbase pursues the domestic regulatory path.
Coinbase has not disclosed its timeline for completing the two-agency approval process. The filings mark the first time a major US crypto exchange has formally sought to bring single-stock perpetual futures to American retail investors under a regulated framework. Market participants will be watching closely to see whether the CFTC moves faster on this filing than it has on other recent derivatives approvals.
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