Coinbase has filed registration documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer perpetual futures on individual US stocks, the company’s chief policy officer said on September 3. The filing starts the approval process but does not clear the products for launch.
The exchange submitted two documents dated September 1, 2026. Coinbase Derivatives filed a Form 1-N, the SEC’s notice registration for an exchange that wants to trade security futures products. Coinbase Financial Markets filed a Form BD-N to register as a security futures broker-dealer, according to reporting by CoinInsider. Together they cover both the trading venue and the brokerage arm that would carry customer accounts, which is the minimum regulatory scaffolding for any security futures product in the United States.
Why both regulators are involved
Perpetual futures are derivative contracts that track the price of an underlying asset with no expiry date. Funding payments keep the contract price near the underlying asset. When the contract trades above the asset, longs pay shorts, and the reverse applies below it. The design keeps prices honest without a settlement date. They are the most traded product in crypto markets, with daily volume in the tens of billions, but they never existed for US stock traders.
Because Coinbase’s proposed contracts would be tied to individual stocks, they would count as security futures under existing law. That puts them under joint SEC and CFTC oversight, unlike futures on broad indexes, which fall to the CFTC alone. After the SEC side, Coinbase still needs separate product approval from the CFTC, Coingabbar reported.
The company is not asking regulators to invent a new category. Security futures already exist in statute, dating to the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and the filing uses that classification rather than pushing for bespoke legislation. That is a deliberate legal choice: the product fits a framework that Congress already wrote, even if the framework has barely been used.
“Equity perps have proven demand internationally, and we’re excited at the prospect of a regulated pathway for U.S. investors,” Faryar Shirzad, Coinbase’s chief policy officer, wrote in a post on X.
The competitive backdrop
The move follows years of offshore activity. Perpetuals on stocks already trade on platforms serving international users, and US trading platforms have started eyeing the product. Coinbase, the largest US-listed crypto exchange, is trying to fold equity perps into its regulated derivatives stack instead of ceding the niche to newer entrants. The company already offers perpetual-style crypto futures to US customers through Coinbase Derivatives, so the infrastructure for margined, no-expiry contracts is partly in place.
Reuters reported the filing on September 3, matching the details in Shirzad’s post. The filings were dated September 1, two days earlier, and cover both entities. Coinbase has built out its derivatives business over the past three years through acquisitions of fairX, a CFTC-regulated exchange, and Echo, a crowdfunding platform, giving it the venues and the customer base this product would need.
What US traders would actually get
If the process ends in approval, US traders would get leveraged, 24/7 exposure to individual stocks, something no US-regulated venue currently offers. Traditional futures on equity indexes settle on set dates and trade limited hours, which is part of why offshore perps drew volume in the first place. A single-stock perp would let a trader hold a leveraged position on, say, an Apple or Tesla share continuously, adjusting size at any hour without rolling contracts.
The product also carries risks that regulators will weigh. Continuous leverage invites liquidation cascades during weekend or overnight gaps when the underlying market is closed but the derivative still trades. Funding rates can swing sharply in volatile sessions. The CFTC has in past years restricted leverage on retail security futures to levels far below what offshore perp desks offer, and any US version would likely come with position limits and margin rules that make it look tame by offshore standards.
History is a caution here. Security futures launched in the early 2000s with heavy promotion from both exchanges and regulators, then flopped. Thin liquidity and tight margin rules made them unattractive next to stock options, and most US venues delisted them within a few years. Coinbase’s bet is that a crypto-style funding mechanism, plus continuous trading, fixes what sank the original product. Whether that holds up under US margin limits is exactly what the CFTC review will test.
The timetable and what comes next
Both entities need effective notice registration, then the CFTC must approve the actual product. Analysts expect the review to take months, and there is no guarantee of a yes. Still, the CFTC has been fielding applications for perpetual-style products this year, and a Coinbase approval would be the largest test yet of whether the security futures framework can absorb a crypto-native contract format.
Rivals are watching. Prediction markets and newer exchanges have pushed their own perp proposals, and the SEC’s recent roundtable on 24-hour trading suggests Washington is at least willing to debate the mechanics. Brokerages that move equities would face a new form of competition if single-stock perps go live: a customer who can trade a leveraged Apple position around the clock has less reason to sit in a margin account that closes at 4 pm. The outcome will shape how much of the offshore derivatives market the US can pull back onshore, and how fast.
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