Author: David, Bankless

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Against the backdrop of long-standing regulatory prohibitions on offshore cryptocurrency exchanges engaging in single-stock perpetual contracts, U.S. compliant exchange Kalshi has achieved a significant institutional breakthrough. Just two days after the CFTC officially allowed registered exchanges to provide single-stock perpetual contracts, Kalshi rapidly launched perpetual products covering over 50 major U.S. stocks and ETFs. This article delivers insights on its product mechanism, regulatory attributes, and the explosive market response.

Launched Just Two Days After Regulatory Easing

Only two days after the CFTC officially approved registered exchanges to launch single-stock perpetual contracts (SSP), the prediction market platform Kalshi officially launched over 50 stock underlyings and announced that the unilateral matching trading volume on that morning had quickly crossed the $300 million mark.

The compliant single-stock perpetual futures launched by Kalshi cover over 50 major U.S. stocks and benchmark ETFs, claiming to be the first licensed compliant institution in the U.S. to publicly offer this financial product.

Product Mechanism and Joint Regulatory Attributes

In terms of product design, investors do not need to actually hold the underlying spot stocks, allowing them to flexibly go long or short on a single stock, with no fixed delivery expiration date, thereby also eliminating the rollover costs typical of traditional futures.

The initial listing by Kalshi includes core weighted blue-chip stocks from the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq markets. The official statement indicated that these contracts are legally classified as securities futures, and are under the joint regulatory oversight of the CFTC and SEC. Previously, the newly appointed CFTC Chairman Mike Selig had just clearly stated that it is completely legal for compliant exchanges to conduct single-stock perpetual contracts.

Trading Hotness and Potential Legal Tug-of-War

Kalshi co-founder Lopes Lara praised single-stock perpetual contracts as the most transformative flagship product since the platform's inception, stating that the $300 million trading volume on the launch morning was spontaneously achieved without large-scale external pre-heating.

Despite the historic breakthrough in financial derivatives business, Kalshi still faces local judicial resistance in the sports prediction contract field. Recently, a federal judge in California issued a preliminary injunction against its sports betting-like contracts conducted on tribal lands; the Arkansas Attorney General also initiated a lawsuit against it concerning the relevant classification of gambling. However, in the mainstream securities derivatives arena, the implementation of compliant perpetual contracts has irreversibly opened up a trillion-dollar new battleground.