CFTC-Approved Perpetual Futures: Where US Access Stands Now

Perpetual futures are now available to US traders through CFTC-regulated channels. On 29 May 2026 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved the first true perpetual futures contract for listing on a US-regulated exchange — a cash-settled bitcoin perpetual — and in a parallel action cleared a route for US customers to reach offshore perpetual markets through a registered futures commission merchant. In the five months since, the contract structure has been extended well beyond bitcoin, with filings covering equity indices, foreign exchange, Treasury notes, crude oil and individual stocks.

What follows is what was actually decided, the two access routes that resulted, what has moved since, and — the part most coverage omits — how the rest of the world is moving in a different direction at the same time.

What the CFTC Did on 29 May 2026

The decision is usually reported as a single approval. It was four coordinated actions, and the distinctions between them matter for anyone trying to work out what is permitted.

The policy statement is the document to read if you want the Commission's own reservations rather than the industry's summary of them. It is explicit that perpetual contracts raise questions the existing framework does not fully answer, and it declines to treat every underlying as equally suitable — noting, for instance, that perpetual structures are poorly matched to agricultural commodities.

Why the Approval Route Mattered

The bitcoin perpetual was cleared through the Commission's formal product approval process, not the self-certification route exchanges normally use to list new futures. Self-certification puts the burden on the exchange to certify compliance; formal approval puts the Commission on record. For a product category whose US classification had been unsettled for most of a decade, that distinction is the substance of the decision. It is the difference between an exchange asserting that perpetuals are futures and the regulator confirming it.

The Two Routes US Traders Now Have

Route 1: An Onshore Listed Contract

The approved bitcoin perpetual trades on a US-registered designated contract market, under US rules, cleared domestically. It went live in early June 2026, and the exchange that listed it has since filed for perpetual contracts across a range of further underlyings.

Route 2: Foreign Futures Under Regulation 30.1

The second route does not bring the contract onshore at all. It confirms that perpetual contracts listed on a particular offshore derivatives venue qualify as foreign futures under Regulation 30.1, which allows a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant to offer them to US customers through an affiliated offshore broker. Customer funds in that structure sit under the Part 30 regime rather than the domestic customer protection rules that apply to onshore futures.

The practical difference is worth stating plainly: Route 1 gives US traders a domestic contract with domestic protections and domestic liquidity. Route 2 gives them access to the deeper offshore order book through a regulated intermediary, with a different protection regime attached. Neither is simply "perps are legal now."

What Has Happened Since: May to October 2026

The May decision has proved to be a framework rather than a one-off, and the pace since has been the real story.

The October relief is instructive on how provisional this all still is. It is conditioned on exchanges soliciting feedback from holders of open positions, giving advance notice, allowing an exit at existing terms and providing risk disclosures — and the no-action position carries an expiry of its own. The Commission's announcement is on the CFTC's press release page.

The Bigger Shift: From Crypto Product to Contract Structure

The framing that matters most is not "the US approved crypto perps." It is that a contract design invented for offshore crypto venues is being adopted as a general-purpose futures structure.

Before May, the perpetual was a crypto instrument. Since May, filings have proposed applying the same no-expiry, funding-rate design to equity indices, currencies, government bonds, energy and single stocks. Several exchanges had already been listing perpetual-style contracts — futures with expiries so distant, in some cases decades out, that they behaved like perpetuals in practice — and are now seeking to remove the expiry dates and convert them properly.

That is a structural change to how US futures markets may work, and it rests on the same mechanism that crypto perpetual markets have used since 2016: a periodic funding payment between longs and shorts that keeps the contract anchored to spot, in place of convergence at an expiry date. We set out how that payment is calculated in our breakdown of how the funding fee works, and why removing the expiry changes a position's behaviour in our comparison of perpetual and traditional futures.

The Same Instrument, Two Directions of Travel

Reading only the American half of this story gives a misleading picture. While the US was bringing perpetual contracts onshore, Europe was tightening its grip on the same instrument — and for a fund operating across global venues, both halves matter.

On 24 February 2026, three months before the CFTC acted, the European Securities and Markets Authority issued a public statement reminding firms that derivatives marketed as "perpetual futures" or "perpetual contracts" are likely to fall inside the existing national product intervention measures for contracts for difference. Its central point was about substance over labelling: the commercial name a firm gives a product is irrelevant to how it is categorised under MiFID II. Where the characteristics meet the CFD definition, the CFD regime applies — leverage limits, a mandatory risk warning, margin close-out, negative balance protection and a prohibition on monetary and non-monetary incentives, alongside narrow target-market and appropriateness obligations. The statement is published on ESMA's website.

A structural point often confused in coverage: perpetual contracts in the EU sit under MiFID II, not MiCA. MiCA governs spot crypto-assets and stablecoins; a leveraged derivative referencing them is a financial instrument under the older and considerably stricter framework.

The United Kingdom goes further. The FCA has prohibited the sale, marketing and distribution of crypto derivatives to retail consumers since January 2021, and that prohibition remains in force while the regulator consults on a wider crypto regime. Australia, Japan and Singapore each apply their own leverage and client-classification limits, and the offshore venues that carried this market for a decade operate under Gulf and Asia-Pacific regimes with different rules again.

The common thread across every one of these jurisdictions is not a verdict on the instrument. It is a line drawn between retail access and professional or institutional access. No major regulator has concluded that perpetual futures are illegitimate; several have concluded that unrestricted retail leverage on them is. That is a meaningful distinction, and it is the one that actually determines who can trade what, where.

For anyone operating across venues, the practical question is therefore not "are perpetuals allowed." It is which regime a given venue sits under, what client classification applies, which protections attach to customer funds, and what counterparty exposure comes with the answer. That question now has materially different answers in New York, Amsterdam, London, Singapore and Dubai — and getting it right is part of the work rather than a footnote to it.

What This Does Not Change

Four things are worth keeping in view, because the celebratory coverage mostly skipped them.

1. No-action relief and policy statements are not rules. Much of this framework rests on staff letters and interpretive positions, which represent the current enforcement posture rather than binding regulation. They can be conditioned, time-limited or revisited, and at least one of the October positions carries an explicit expiry date. Whether the Commission pursues formal rulemaking specific to perpetual contracts is an open question.
2. Access is venue-specific and participant-specific. Eligibility depends on which contract, which venue, which intermediary and which customer. "Available in the US" is not a single status.
3. The risk profile of the instrument is unchanged by its regulatory status. Perpetual futures are leveraged products with automatic liquidation. Regulatory approval addresses market structure and customer protection; it does not reduce the leverage, remove liquidation risk or make funding costs predictable. The Commission's own policy statement is candid about the customer protection questions still outstanding.
4. Funding rates still do what they always did. They move with positioning, they can invert, and they are variable on regulated venues exactly as they are on offshore ones.

What It Means for Market-Neutral Strategies

For a strategy built on capturing funding rather than taking a view on price, the regulatory shift changes the venue map rather than the trade.

Three consequences follow. First, the opportunity set widens: more venues listing perpetual contracts means more places where a funding rate is printed, and rates differ between venues at the same moment. Second, the comparison between venues becomes more complex rather than less — an onshore contract and an offshore one referencing the same asset sit under different margin regimes, different customer protections and different clearing arrangements, so a spread between their funding rates is not purely an arbitrage opportunity; part of it is compensation for those differences. Third, the instrument's spread into other asset classes means funding-rate dynamics will shortly be observable in markets that have never had them.

None of that alters the mechanics of a delta-neutral position, which are set out in our strategy overview and in detail in our guide to funding rate arbitrage. It does mean the execution question — which venue, under which regime, with what counterparty exposure — is becoming a larger part of the work than it was a year ago. Law firm analysis of the May actions and their implications for exchanges and intermediaries is available in this review of the Commission's decisions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did the CFTC make perpetual futures legal in the US?

Not in those terms. Perpetual futures were not prohibited; their classification under US law was unsettled, which meant no registered exchange listed one. The May 2026 actions confirmed that such contracts can be listed as futures on a registered exchange and set out how. Availability still depends on the venue, the contract and the participant.

What is the difference between a perpetual contract and a perpetual-style contract?

A true perpetual has no expiry date and uses a funding-rate mechanism to track spot. A perpetual-style contract is a conventional futures contract with an expiry set very far out — in some cases decades — so that it behaves similarly in practice. Exchanges have been seeking relief to remove those expiry dates and convert the contracts properly.

Does a no-action letter have the force of a rule?

No. A no-action letter states that a division of the Commission does not intend to recommend enforcement action in defined circumstances, usually subject to conditions. It is not a regulation, it binds only the issuing division, and it can be time-limited or withdrawn.

Can US traders access offshore perpetual venues directly?

The route established in May works through a CFTC-registered intermediary and an affiliated offshore broker, with the contracts treated as foreign futures under Regulation 30.1. That is a supervised channel rather than direct access, and customer funds sit under the Part 30 regime.

Can traders in the UK or EU access perpetual futures?

Treatment differs sharply from the US. In the EU, ESMA stated in February 2026 that products marketed as perpetual futures are likely to fall within the CFD product intervention regime, which brings leverage limits, risk warnings, margin close-out and negative balance protection for retail clients. In the UK, the FCA has prohibited the sale of crypto derivatives to retail consumers since January 2021 and that prohibition remains in place. Professional and institutional client treatment differs from retail treatment in both jurisdictions, and eligibility depends on venue and client classification.

Are perpetual futures now available on assets other than crypto?

Filings submitted since May cover equity indices, foreign exchange, Treasury notes, crude oil and individual stocks. These are at varying stages, and a filing is not an approval. Crypto remains where the listed and live contracts are concentrated.

Watching the Market That Resulted

The result of all this is more venues, more contracts and more published funding rates than existed six months ago. Current rates across the major perpetual markets, and the instruments attached to them, are on our live markets page. Questions about access and eligibility are collected on our FAQ page.

The direction of travel is clear enough. A contract structure that spent a decade outside the US regulatory perimeter was brought inside it in roughly five months, and is now being proposed for Treasuries, currencies, equity indices and oil. Regulators who have examined the instrument closely have not concluded that it is illegitimate; they have concluded that it needs a framework, and they are building one in public, at speed, in several jurisdictions at once.

What that produces is a wider and more fragmented venue map than existed a year ago — more contracts, more published funding rates, and more variation in the rules attached to each. For a strategy that earns its return from funding rather than from direction, that is an expanding opportunity set and a harder operational problem arriving together. Both halves are worth paying attention to.

This article is published for informational purposes and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice, or an offer to transact. It describes regulatory developments as in October 2026; positions taken by staff letter or policy statement may be conditioned, time-limited or revised. Availability of any product depends on venue, contract and participant eligibility. Derivatives involve leverage and risk of loss, and funding rates are variable and can turn negative. Capital is at risk.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.