US regulators just unlocked crypto perpetual futures — long Coinbase as the first-mover winner
US regulators just gave the green light for a popular crypto trading product — perpetual futures — to be offered on American soil for the first time. Coinbase is among the first platforms approved to offer them.
Idea
Perpetual futures are the most-traded crypto product in the world — until now, Americans had to use offshore exchanges to access them. Bringing them onshore to regulated platforms like Coinbase unlocks a massive new revenue stream: traders pay fees on every contract, and perpetuals are famous for generating the highest fee revenue of any crypto product. Coinbase was specifically named in the CFTC's no-action letter, giving it a clear first-mover advantage over rivals. Crypto exchanges that add high-volume trading products tend to see their stock price rise as investors price in the future fee income. The one risk is that Bitcoin itself has been seeing outflows from ETFs lately, so this trade works best if the broader crypto market stabilizes — which is why the strategy pairs the Coinbase long with a check that Bitcoin is holding up.