US just greenlit crypto perpetual futures — Coinbase stands to win big
The main U.S. derivatives regulator just cleared the way for crypto perpetual futures contracts — a hugely popular trading product that until now only existed on offshore exchanges. Coinbase and prediction-market platform Kalshi are among the first to get the green light to offer these products to American traders.
Idea
Perpetual futures are the most-traded crypto instrument globally, responsible for trillions in monthly volume on offshore exchanges like Binance. Bringing them onshore to regulated U.S. platforms is a massive new revenue opportunity for Coinbase, which already has the largest compliant crypto exchange in the country. This is not just a one-day news pop — it is a structural business expansion that adds an entirely new product category. Even though Bitcoin ETFs have been seeing outflows recently, this regulatory win applies to the infrastructure layer (Coinbase), not the price of Bitcoin itself, making it a cleaner trade independent of crypto's day-to-day price swings.