Coinbase started offering perpetual-style futures for Bitcoin and Ether on its CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange this week, giving US traders a regulated path into the most popular corner of crypto derivatives. The nano-sized contracts track spot prices, carry embedded leverage, and trade around the clock — a structure that has long been the domain of offshore platforms.
What Coinbase is actually selling
The contracts aren't true perpetuals — not yet. Coinbase structured them as long-dated futures with five-year expirations and an hourly funding rate settled twice a day. That's a workaround that lets the exchange offer the product while the CFTC's June conversion route remains open. Once that mechanism is fully operational, Coinbase can drop the expiration date and turn them into genuine no-expiry perpetuals.
The regulatory dominoes that made this possible
The barrier broke on May 29 when the CFTC approved KalshiEX's BTCPERP as a futures contract referencing Bitcoin's spot price. The agency followed up on June 12 with a policy statement giving designated contract markets a conditional route to strip expiration dates off existing perpetual-style futures. CME sued the CFTC and Chairman Michael Selig on June 18, arguing that perpetuals meet the statutory definition of swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act — which would pull them into a heavier regime of dealer registration, capital rules and reporting. A CFTC spokesperson said CME had chosen to undertake lawfare against the agency and the administration's pro-innovation agenda, accused incumbents of fearing competition, and promised to have the suit dismissed as frivolous.
Perpetual futures make up the large majority of crypto derivatives activity — Coinbase puts the figure at upwards of 90% of derivatives volume in some measures, with derivatives themselves accounting for roughly 80% of all crypto trading. For years, that trading happened almost entirely on exchanges outside American oversight, and US traders who wanted in used VPNs to access offshore platforms. Kalshi has already self-certified more than a dozen additional crypto perpetuals under the May order, and trading in them has passed $1 billion.
Two perpetuals, one label
Two different structures now carry the same label in the US. Kalshi's BTCPERP is a genuine no-expiry perpetual. Coinbase's contracts are long-dated substitutes with a conversion path. The CFTC also sued Kentucky in late June over which authority governs contract markets — a reminder that the regulatory picture is still being drawn. The CME lawsuit remains unresolved, and the conversion route is the mechanism that will eventually let Coinbase's contracts become the real thing.
