U.S. just legalized crypto perpetual futures — long Coinbase as it becomes the first major platform to offer them
The U.S. government's derivatives regulator just gave the green light for crypto perpetual futures contracts to trade on American exchanges for the first time. Coinbase and Kalshi are first in line to offer these products, which have been hugely popular overseas.
Idea
Perpetual futures are the most-traded crypto product in the world, but they've always been offshore — unregulated exchanges like Binance dominated this space. Now the CFTC is letting U.S. platforms offer them legally, and Coinbase is the biggest name approved to launch first. This opens up a massive new revenue stream: trading fees on a product category that handles hundreds of billions in daily volume globally. When a major exchange gets exclusive access to a hot new product category in the U.S. market, the stock tends to run ahead of actual revenue as investors price in the potential.