Kalshi wants to take crypto-style perpetual futures into gold, FX and energy

Why it matters

Kalshi's regulatory push is a test of whether a founder-led prediction market can become a mainstream derivatives exchange, and whether retail access to complex contracts will survive the scrutiny that comes with that ambition.

Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara's Kalshi is in advanced talks with U.S. regulators to expand perpetual futures beyond crypto and into metals, foreign exchange, energy, broad indexes and potentially individual stocks, Reuters reported Thursday.

The push would move Kalshi further from its original identity as a regulated prediction market for event contracts and deeper into the business of incumbent derivatives exchanges. Kalshi chief risk officer Udesh Jha told Reuters that gold is one candidate because it is "retail friendly," and said FX, metals and energy are likely near-term priorities because geopolitics and seasonality are driving investor demand.

Mansour and Lara founded Kalshi. Its Y Combinator profile describes it as a Winter 2019 company building a federally regulated exchange where users can trade on the outcome of events, with a stated belief that people should be able to "capitalize on what they know."

That founder thesis is now being stretched into a much larger regulatory bet. Kalshi is asking the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to let a product structure that grew up in crypto markets move into markets that already have powerful exchanges, established clearing practices and heavier questions around market manipulation, delivery, storage and retail risk.

The product Kalshi is trying to normalize

Perpetual futures, usually called perps, are derivative contracts without fixed expiration dates. Traders can keep a position open indefinitely instead of closing or rolling it into a new contract. A funding payment between long and short positions is supposed to keep the contract price close to the underlying asset's spot price.

The CFTC gave Kalshi its first opening on May 29, 2026, when it approved KalshiEX LLC's BTCPERP futures contract. The approved contract references the U.S. dollar spot price of bitcoin, is cash settled, trades in units of one ten-thousandth of a bitcoin, and has no fixed expiration date. The CFTC order says the contract can trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week, subject to Kalshi trading halts.

That approval was deliberately narrow. The CFTC order said its analysis was limited to bitcoin and similarly structured perpetual contracts referencing digital commodities with deep, active and continuous spot markets. It also said the analysis did not extend to underlying asset classes outside digital commodities, and encouraged market participants seeking non-crypto perpetuals to engage with the commission and its staff.

That is the gap Kalshi is now trying to fill. Reuters reported that Kalshi has already seen $16.1 billion in perpetual-contract trading volume since launch. The number is company-provided through Reuters and does not disclose revenue, margin terms, active traders, open interest or how much of the volume came from repeat trading by institutions.

Why gold and oil are harder than bitcoin

Bitcoin gave regulators an easier first test because its spot market trades continuously. The CFTC's order leaned heavily on that point, saying bitcoin's 24/7 spot market lets the contract's reference price remain continuously observable while the perp trades. That matters because a perp has no final settlement moment. Its reference price has to work again and again at each funding interval.

Gold, oil, FX and energy contracts bring different questions. Physical commodities have storage costs, delivery constraints, seasonality and position-limit regimes that do not map cleanly onto a no-expiration structure. The CFTC acknowledged those issues in a June 22 request for comment, asking for public input on 24/7 trading in energy derivatives and the potential listing of perpetual contracts tied to physically delivered or storable energy commodities such as crude oil.

Chairman Michael S. Selig said in that release that the CFTC wants a data-driven record on how new trading hours and contract designs affect markets. The agency framed the process around preserving protections against manipulation and market disruption while supporting "responsible innovation."

A separate Federal Register policy statement explains why Kalshi cannot simply treat non-crypto perps as another self-certified product. The commission said perpetual contracts outside the May bitcoin order should go through case-by-case review under Regulation 40.3. The statement also singled out customer protection, market structure and resilience during stress as open questions.

That makes Kalshi's current talks the real product launch gate. Reuters describes the discussions as advanced, but no approval has been reported for non-crypto asset classes. If the products are approved, Reuters reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, that they would trade during regular trading hours rather than around the clock.

The retail risk is the political problem

Kalshi's pitch has always depended on federal regulation. That was the founders' wedge against offshore markets and state-by-state betting rules: put event trading inside a CFTC-regulated venue and argue that a contract on a future outcome is a financial instrument rather than a casino product.

Perps make that argument harder. Reuters noted that perpetual futures can let traders borrow heavily, sometimes as much as 50 times the value of the contract, which means a small price move can wipe out a position. Jha told Reuters that Kalshi's participants skew retail, while also including institutions. That combination is exactly what critics are targeting.

CME Group's outgoing CEO Terry Duffy has called the rollout of crypto perps a "disaster waiting to happen," Reuters reported. CME followed with a June 18 lawsuit against the CFTC and Selig challenging the regulator's decision to let Kalshi and Coinbase list or route access to perpetual futures. Reuters said CME is seeking to void the CFTC's May 29 approval for Kalshi's bitcoin perp and the related policy statement allowing similar contracts.

CME's legal theory is also a business defense. In the complaint described by Reuters, CME said the CFTC's approval caused competitive injury by letting Kalshi, Coinbase and others compete for retail customers. Reuters also reported that shares of CME and Intercontinental Exchange fell after the decision, reflecting investor concern that crypto-style contracts could pull order flow away from incumbent exchanges.

Kalshi is testing how far the exchange label can go

The most important part of Kalshi's current move is the change in self-definition. Mansour and Lara built Kalshi as an exchange for event outcomes: elections, weather, sports, economic releases and other yes-or-no markets. Perpetual futures put Kalshi in a contest over market structure itself.

If the CFTC lets Kalshi list perps on gold, FX or energy, the company gets a path to compete for a broader class of speculative and hedging flow. It would also validate the founders' long-running bet that a startup can use regulatory status, rather than regulatory avoidance, as a distribution advantage.

The approval path will turn on details Kalshi has not made public: contract specifications, margin levels, funding mechanics, market surveillance, position limits, reference prices and how retail customers will be protected when contracts have no natural end date. Those details matter more in commodities than in crypto because the underlying markets are tied to physical supply, storage and geopolitical shocks.

Kalshi has already proven that a prediction market can become a mainstream consumer finance product when the regulatory perimeter moves in its favor. Its next test is whether the same founder playbook can carry it into the core derivatives business without giving regulators and incumbents an easy argument that the product moved faster than the safeguards.