Commodity Markets Council asks CFTC to reject Kalshi perpetual oil filing

The Commodity Markets Council asked the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to reject Kalshi's proposed perpetual crude oil futures contract, about two days after the prediction market platform filed it. The trade group argued the product risks market integrity and asked the regulator to withhold approval, Crypto Briefing reported on Oct. 22. CoinGape described the same push that day and attributed the underlying account to Bloomberg.

Kalshi submitted the contract, called WTIPERP, on Oct. 20 through a voluntary filing under Commission Regulation 40.3(a) signed by Xavier Sottile, the company's head of markets. A voluntary submission asks the commission to review and approve a product before it lists, rather than letting it go live through self-certification. The document describes WTIPERP as a cash-settled perpetual future that references the NYMEX Light Sweet Crude Oil futures contract at a constant one-month maturity, with Pyth Network publishing the index that fixes that maturity. Each contract covers 100 barrels, and ten contracts equal one standard 1,000-barrel WTI contract. Trading would run from 6 p.m. ET Sunday through 5 p.m. ET Friday on the same schedule as the underlying NYMEX market, including its holiday and early-closure calendar.

The filing says the contract has no fixed expiration and no delivery. Instead, a funding mechanism charges the side of the market trading above the reference price and pays the side trading below it, pulling the contract's price back toward the underlying index at regular intervals. The funding rate is the equally weighted mean of the session's observations, a one-tick deadband filters noise, and a $1.00-per-barrel clamp bounds any single day's transfer. The exchange told the CFTC it intends to list WTIPERP shortly after approval and has engaged with commission staff on the design in advance of the submission.

For position limits, the filing converts holdings into reference contract equivalents at ten to one and attributes that exposure to the two delivery months bracketing the constant maturity. Because the weight on an expiring month fades before that month ends, the exchange says each contract carries at most about 0.02 reference contract equivalents of spot-month exposure, so the product cannot build spot-month exposure outside the federal framework. The terms also handle extreme prices directly: percentage thresholds apply to the greater of the price or a $10.00 floor, and orders, trades and settlements are permitted at negative prices.

The contract also avoids weekend trading. The filing points to the commission's July 9 stay of a self-certified around-the-clock crude oil contract, and argues that its own hours leave no weekend session in which the product could form a WTI price while the benchmark market is closed.

The letter from the Commodity Markets Council went out around Oct. 22, two days after Kalshi filed. Its membership includes CME Group, NYMEX, ICE Futures U.S., trading houses and commercial hedgers, according to Crypto Briefing's report. The group's objection is not limited to one contract. It also asked the CFTC to work with foreign regulators so that U.S. retail traders cannot reach offshore derivatives platforms by masking their location with VPNs, CoinGape reported.

Kalshi's oil push started before the perpetual filing. Earlier in October the platform launched a WTI futures contract that trades 24 hours a day, five days a week, with a 10-year expiry. That product is generating daily volume of about $57 million and lets traders control positions worth up to 5.9 times the cash they post, Crypto Briefing reported. Kalshi already runs perpetual contracts in other markets: it launched a U.S. 500 index perpetual earlier this month, and its lineup includes crypto perpetuals tied to bitcoin, ether, XRP and HYPE, plus CFTC-regulated gold and silver perpetuals, according to CoinGape.

The filing casts WTIPERP as a regulated alternative to those offshore venues, telling the CFTC that the contract gives commercial and retail participants a centrally cleared product where crude oil perpetuals "already trade without any of these protections." The CFTC has at least 45 days to decide, and the review window could stretch to 90 days because of the contract's structure. That clock started with the October 20 submission.