Kalshi has submitted two new perpetual futures contracts to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, marking a significant push to expand its offerings beyond digital assets into traditional equity indexes and commodities. The move comes amid a high-stakes legal challenge from CME Group over the regulatory classification of such perpetual contracts.
The proposed US500 contract tracks the MerQube US Large Cap Index, covering 500 major U.S.-domiciled companies. Structured as cash-settled with no fixed expiration, the contract utilizes periodic funding payments to maintain alignment with the index. Kalshi has proposed a $25 million position accountability level, with additional safeguards including price bands and order limits to mitigate market disruption.
Simultaneously, the firm filed for a COPPERPERP contract, which references the Pyth Network’s XCU/USD price feed. Each contract represents 1,000 pounds of copper, with trading proposed for nearly 24 hours a day during the work week. Kalshi aligned this product’s $5 million position accountability level with existing federal standards for COMEX copper contracts.
These filings arrive as the CFTC faces a lawsuit from CME Group, which contends that perpetual contracts should be classified as swaps rather than futures under the Dodd-Frank Act. While the CFTC has dismissed the legal challenge as frivolous and previously approved Kalshi’s Bitcoin perpetuals, the new applications for equity and commodity products introduce complex market structure questions. The Commission must now decide whether its existing regulatory framework for digital assets can be applied to traditional market instruments while the broader legal dispute remains unresolved.
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