Kalshi Plans 24/7 Tesla and Nvidia Perpetual Futures

Kalshi plans to seek U.S. regulatory approval for roughly 60 perpetual futures tied to individual stocks and exchange-traded funds, including Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia, CoinDesk reported on Sept. 11. The proposed contracts could trade around the clock and, if approved, would be the first regulated U.S. perpetual futures on individual stocks.

A perpetual future lets traders bet on whether a price rises or falls, often with borrowed money, with no expiration date. Regular payments between traders keep the contract near the price it tracks. A Tesla perpetual could therefore trade through nights and weekends while Nasdaq is closed, producing a live price before the market reopens. The core regulatory question is whether such a product is a future under Commodity Futures Trading Commission oversight or a security under Securities and Exchange Commission jurisdiction, the report explains.

The stock-perp plan extends a rollout Kalshi began with crypto. On May 29, the company called itself the first in American history to offer perpetuals, noting offshore volumes grew from $28 trillion in 2023 to more than $90 trillion in 2025. Chief executive Tarek Mansour called the launch Kalshi's evolution "from prediction market leader to next-gen derivatives exchange," the company wrote. Its bitcoin perpetual allows positions up to six times the cash committed, with funding payments every eight hours, a minimum near $8, settlement against the CF Benchmarks Bitcoin Real Time Index, and clearing through Kalshi Klear, per its help center. Trading runs 24/7 with no expiry.

Demand followed quickly. Crypto perpetuals crossed $1 billion in notional value within a week of launch, and have since done $44 billion, CNBC reported. On Sept. 10, Kalshi launched 24/7 gold and silver perpetuals, describing them as the first of their kind in the country and fully regulated by the CFTC, with a pitch against rollover fees, ETF charges, and the cost of holding physical metal. Approval came that week after a July filing; commodity event contracts had already drawn more than $400 million in seven months. August filings seek an "US500" perpetual tied to the MerQube U.S. Large Cap Index of the 500 largest U.S.-listed companies, plus a copper contract, CNBC reported in August.

Kalshi's confidence rests on a courtroom win. The company sought contracts on control of Congress in June 2023, a district court sided with it in September 2024, an appeals court refused to stay trading that October, and on May 5, 2025 the CFTC voted to drop its appeal, definitively securing event contracts in the United States. "Today is historic," Mansour said then. "We have officially and definitively secured the future of prediction markets in America," Reuters reported. Weeks later, on May 29, the CFTC approved a bitcoin perpetual as a futures contract, cash-settled against spot, while warning that other asset classes would get individual review under a policy statement. That order covers similarly structured digital-commodity perpetuals with deep spot markets; it does not decide how a stock-linked perpetual would be regulated.

Wall Street is fighting that classification. On Sept. 9, Citadel Securities wrote to the SEC and CFTC arguing venues should not use CFTC self-certification to sidestep SEC jurisdiction. Self-certification can list a contract the next business day without public comment, while SEC listing requires a showing of compliance, comment, and affirmative approval. "A trading venue should not be able to effectively choose its regulator for an equity-linked product based on its own unilateral characterization of such product," wrote Stephen John Berger, the firm's global head of government and regulatory policy, The Block reported. The letter argues KPI binary options can be securities, and can also qualify as security-based swaps when tied to a single issuer's event, flagging novel insider risks around not only whether metrics are met but whether and how they get reported. It asks the SEC to commit to timely review of equity-linked event contracts and perpetual derivatives so products succeed on merit rather than jurisdictional gaps.

CoinDesk's account of the same fight adds the market-structure worry: moving equity perpetuals elsewhere could create a parallel market disconnected from stock and options surveillance, where employees might trade on undisclosed earnings during a blackout, or news breaks during a halt while the perpetual keeps moving. The SEC connects stock and options surveillance today; trading halts, order handling, and access rules may not carry across, the Sept. 11 report notes.

The CFTC itself is still writing the rulebook for round-the-clock trading. On June 22 it asked for comment on extending standard futures, including energy contracts, to 24/7 hours without changing expiry, delivery, or settlement, and on perpetuals tied to physically delivered or storable energy commodities such as crude, the agency said. It extended the comment deadline to Aug. 26 after requests for more time, a July release says. Separately, CME sued the CFTC over crypto perpetuals, arguing contracts with no expiry or delivery plus funding payments are swaps, a departure from past enforcement against offshore venues. On Sept. 3 the agency asked a judge to throw the case out as "much ado about nothing," saying CME lacks standing and any designated market, CME included, can list such products, CoinDesk reported. The judge ordered a combined schedule by Sept. 4.

Against that backdrop, the current public record does not establish whether Kalshi has filed anything for stock-linked perpetuals, which regulator would oversee a given contract, or when trading might start. No filing, contract rulebook, listing date, reference-price methodology, funding schedule, position limits, or halt procedures have been published. Citadel's letter is advocacy, not an agency decision, and the May bitcoin order explicitly reserved judgment on other asset classes. What is established is the commercial logic: crypto perpetuals did $44 billion, metals launched Sept. 10, indexes and copper are filed, and equities are next in line if the jurisdictional fight resolves in Kalshi's favor.