The exchange asked the CFTC to approve contracts tracking a 500-stock US index and spot copper, three months after regulators cleared the country’s first bitcoin perpetual futures.
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Posted August 19, 2026 at 2:02 pm EST.
Kalshi asked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Aug. 18 to approve perpetual futures on a US large-cap stock index and on copper, its first attempt to carry the crypto-native contract structure into equities, a month after it asked the agency to approve a perpetual future on gold.
Perpetual futures never expire. Rather than roll a position into a new contract every quarter, traders hold one indefinitely and exchange periodic funding payments that drag the contract price back toward the market it tracks. The design ran offshore crypto venues for years before US regulators cleared it in May.
What Kalshi Wants to List
The equity product, US500, would track the MerQube US Large Cap Index, a float-adjusted index of 500 US-listed, US-domiciled large-cap companies. Kalshi filed for a multiplier of $1 on each index point, a minimum tick of 0.05 index points, and cash settlement with no delivery. It set a position accountability level of $25 million in mark-to-market value and a funding transfer at 4 p.m. ET on each index business day.
The metals product, COPPERPERP, would cover 1,000 pounds of copper priced off Pyth Network‘s XCU/USD feed. Kalshi proposed a minimum tick of $0.0005 a pound, worth 50 cents a contract, a spot-month position limit of 25,000 contracts matching the federal limit tied to COMEX copper futures, and a daily funding transfer at 10 a.m. ET. Both contracts would clear through Kalshi Klear, the exchange’s in-house clearinghouse, and trade continuously from 6 p.m. ET Sunday to 5 p.m. ET Friday.
The exchange said it intends to list each contract shortly after the CFTC signs off.
The Legal Cloud Over Perps
The filings arrived while the first US perpetual approvals are still being litigated. The CFTC opened the door in May with sign-offs at Kalshi and Coinbase, and CME Group sued the agency in June, arguing the contracts are swaps rather than futures because they exchange funding payments and transfer price risk with no set delivery date. Kalshi has kept building on the format regardless, and Kalshi Head of Crypto John Wang has described perps as the purest trading instrument available. The copper filing rests on that May decision, citing the bitcoin perpetual approval and the Commission’s policy statement on perpetual contracts as precedent.
Related Listen: Why CME Sued the CFTC Over the Kalshi Bitcoin Perp Approval
AI-assisted content: This article was produced with the assistance of AI tools and was reviewed, edited, and fact-checked by a member of the Unchained editorial team before publication.
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