Kalshi is looking to bring one of crypto’s most popular trading products—perpetual futures—to the U.S. stock market. The operator plans to seek regulatory approval for about 60 perpetual futures tied to individual stocks and exchange-traded funds, including Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia, that could trade around the clock.

If approved, these contracts would be the first regulated single-stock perpetual futures in the United States. They allow leveraged bets on price movements without expiration dates, a feature popular in crypto markets but new to traditional equities.

However, the move has raised concerns about regulatory oversight. Is a perpetual contract tied to a stock a futures product overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), or does it belong with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which regulates the underlying shares?

Prominent trading firm Citadel Securities has argued that products tied to U.S. public companies should remain under SEC oversight. In a letter to the regulators, Citadel warned that moving them elsewhere could create a «parallel shadow market» disconnected from the surveillance used across U.S. stocks and options. The concern is that an employee with undisclosed earnings information could trade a perp while the stock market is shut, or that major news could be released during a trading halt while the perp keeps moving.

Kalshi already won CFTC approval in May for a bitcoin perpetual contract. The regulator classified it as a futures contract but warned the structure might not work for every asset class and said perps tied to other kinds of assets should go through individual review.

The integration of a product built for a market that never closes into one that does remains a complex endeavor, raising questions about market coordination and regulatory enforcement.

Tokenized equities are leading real-world asset (RWA) inflows as the market recovers. Binance’s bStocks has hit approximately $118.5 million in two months, now serving as the #2 issuer and accounting for about 90% of on-chain equity DEX volume.