CFTC Clears Equity Perpetuals; Wall Street Sues Within Hours

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission cleared perpetual futures on single U.S. stocks for trading on Tuesday, and a Wall Street coalition filed suit to block the policy the same day. The approval, issued as a statement from CFTC Chairman Michael Selig, classifies equity perpetual futures as security futures products under the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, placing them under joint CFTC and SEC oversight. Hours later, a new group called the Capital Markets Alliance sued in the Southern District of New York to eliminate the policy.

A perpetual future is a leveraged bet on a price that never expires; the holder keeps the position as long as margin requirements are met and a funding rate is paid. U.S. law previously had no clear home for the instrument, which is why American traders have used it mostly on offshore venues such as Binance and onchain platforms like Hyperliquid.

Who can actually list the product?

The eligible venue list is short, and it was assembled quietly. A firm must be a CFTC-designated contract market and separately notice-registered with the SEC as a national securities exchange for security futures products. Seven entities hold both designations:

• Cboe
• CME
• Coinbase
• Kalshi
• Bitnomial
• Nadex
• ICE Futures U.S.

Five of the seven filed within a single 30-day window in September. Kalshi is furthest along, with a filing covering 56 to 58 stock names and a launch expected within days. Coinbase has filed to list perps on Apple, Tesla and Nvidia. Those two are the immediate commercial winners; Hyperliquid and Lighter, the largest crypto perps protocols, sit next in line for potential CFTC approvals, though no timeline exists for either.

What does the lawsuit argue?

The Capital Markets Alliance, whose members include Cboe, Citadel Securities and the Healthy Markets Association, argues on two tracks. First, that stock perps are securities-based swaps and therefore belong to the SEC rather than the CFTC. Second, that the CFTC violated the Administrative Procedure Act by never explaining why it reversed an earlier position. The American Securities Association filed separately, noting that Congress banned the sale of security-based swaps to retail investors outright.

A CFTC spokesman called the suit "troubling," adding: "our markets should be governed by law, not litigation campaigns intended to block innovation." Precedent cuts partly against the plaintiffs: the CME sued over the CFTC's crypto perps approval on the theory that perpetuals are swaps rather than futures, and that challenge went nowhere. The retail-swap ban argument, however, remains untested in this context.

Circle, Tether and the day's numbers

Circle reported third-quarter revenue and reserve income of $865 million, up 17% year over year, with average USDC circulation at $73.3 billion. The stock traded down roughly 3% premarket despite the growth figure, a gap between fundamentals and market reaction worth watching.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said at the Plan ₿ Forum in Lugano that the company holds "give or take 150,000 Bitcoin," worth roughly $11.5 billion. The Q3 attestation accounts for only $8.37 billion of Bitcoin, about 100,100 coins, leaving approximately 50,000 coins unexplained. Ardoino offered no reconciliation, and none was requested on stage.

Enforcement, breaches and governance

Binance traced its $6.34 billion hack to a fake job interview in which an engineer downloaded a coding assignment that installed malware the firm's endpoint tools never flagged. Attackers then spent weeks moving laterally, abusing an internal AI tool to seize two more employees' machines before reaching the wallet signing service on October 29.

The SEC's Division of Corporation Finance said it will not recommend enforcement over Canton Coin's programmatic issuance, treating the token as a digital commodity in a no-action letter. Justin Sun asked a federal court to sanction World Liberty Financial over a disclosure that initially listed the Trump-backed venture as a Florida company; Sun argues the late amendment was a tactic to push his $45 million dispute out of federal court.

Elsewhere, NEAR's House of Stake voted to cut maximum annual token issuance from 2.5% to 1.6% over 24 months, a 36% reduction in the issuance rate. Robinhood and Arbitrum opened applications for the second cohort of their 12-week Arbitrum Mentorship Program, which offers $100,000 in grants per team and demo-day access, with $1.8 million committed in total grants. Bitcoin ETFs saw $116 million in net outflows Tuesday; ETH ETFs saw $85 million in outflows.

What comes next

The SDNY case will determine whether equity perps survive their first week of existence, and Kalshi's expected launch within days gives the court a live product to rule on. Whatever the outcome, the dual-registered venue list, not the broader market, controls access in the near term.