Kalshi files perps on US stocks and copper

KalshiEX filed two perpetual futures contracts with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Tuesday, one tied to a U.S. equity index and another to copper, as it moved further beyond event contracts and towards a broader exchange-style product set. The submissions were made under Commission Regulation 40.3(a).

The US500 contract is designed as a perpetual futures contract on the MerQube U.S. Large Cap Index. The exchange intends to list it continuously and shortly after any approval, and the index itself is composed of the 500 largest companies listed and domiciled in the United States, weighted by float-adjusted market capitalisation and administered by MerQube.

Finance Magnates reported that the US500 contract would be quoted in index points with a $1 multiplier per point and a minimum tick of $0.05. It said funding would be calculated only against the index’s regular U.S. equity-session prices, from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. ET, and settled daily at the 4 p.m. close.

Kalshi’s copper filing, COPPERPERP, also seeks continuous listing after approval. The contract is tied to the spot price of copper in U.S. dollars per pound and references the Pyth Network XCU/USD price feed. It trades 24 hours a day, five days a week, from 6 p.m. ET on Sunday to 5 p.m. ET on Friday, and is closed over the weekend.

The filing says funding and settlement are based on per-minute premiums and only run when the reference market is open and the feed is current. It also gives each contract a trading unit of 1,000 pounds, a minimum tick of $0.0005 per pound, or $0.50 a contract, a $5 million position accountability level and a 100-contract reportable level.

Perpetual futures, or perps, have no fixed expiration date and use periodic funding payments to keep the contract price close to the spot market. Kalshi said it wanted to be seen as a full-fledged, multi-asset financial exchange, and engineer Lior Hirschfeld called the initiative "the next step towards building the largest exchange on the planet".

The move lands against a shifting regulatory backdrop. A CFTC policy statement issued in May said perpetual contracts have largely developed offshore because of regulatory uncertainty, and that products referencing asset classes not contemplated in the bitcoin order, including precious metals, equity securities and narrow-based security indexes, should be submitted for Commission review under Regulation 40.3. The statement also said each contract would continue to be evaluated on its own terms.

Kalshi’s filings follow the CFTC’s late-May approval of its bitcoin perpetual contract, a step that The Block said opened the door for such assets to trade in the U.S. for the first time. CNBC reported that Kalshi said its own perpetual futures crossed $1 billion in notional volume within a week of launch, after the company said global perps volume topped $90 trillion in 2025.

The expansion has also worried established exchanges. CNBC reported that shares of CME Group and Cboe Global Markets fell in early June after the bitcoin approval, and that CME sued the CFTC in federal court over the decision.