The Lobby for Onshore Equity Perps Now Has Two Voices Asking for the Same Thing

Two separate policy pushes this week point at the same jurisdictional gap. Crypto Briefing reports that the Blockchain Association has called for a coordinated framework from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to bring equity perpetual contracts onshore in the United States. The Block reports that the Hyperliquid Policy Center has urged the same two agencies to harmonise their rules for perpetual contracts, as the venue's multi-asset perps grow and attract attention from traditional exchanges.

A perpetual contract is a derivative without an expiry date. It tracks a reference price and stays anchored to it through funding payments exchanged between long and short holders. When the reference is a stock, the instrument sits awkwardly between two regulators: the SEC has jurisdiction over securities, the CFTC over most derivatives, and a perpetual on a single equity plausibly implicates both.

Why the gap matters commercially

That ambiguity is why the deepest perpetual markets are offshore. Neither trade body is asking for permission to do something new so much as asking for a definition of who says yes. The commercial argument, as Crypto Briefing frames the Blockchain Association's case, is competitiveness: volume currently routed to non-US venues could be brought within a domestic supervisory perimeter.

The counter-consideration is equally obvious and is the reason this has stayed unresolved. Perpetual exposure to a single stock delivers leverage on a security without the disclosure, margin and short-sale machinery attached to the cash and listed-options markets. A joint framework would have to decide how much of that machinery travels with the instrument.

It connects directly to what is being built

This is not an abstract policy debate for readers of this desk. Arcus has just launched tokenized perpetual positions on Robinhood Chain and says tokenized stocks can back leveraged trades. Coinbase has put equity tokens on Base for eligible non-US users. The whole product category is currently constructed to work for people outside the United States, and the lobbying is an attempt to change that geography.

There is also a signal from the securities regulator itself. The SEC has proposed token offering rules pairing registration exemptions with a conditional safe harbour, backed by all three sitting commissioners in a vote held outside a public meeting, according to The Defiant. That is a separate proceeding from anything to do with perps, but it indicates an agency willing to write new categories rather than only apply old ones.

What is actually on the record

Nothing here is a rule. These are trade association submissions and policy centre advocacy, from parties with commercial interests in the outcome, and neither the SEC nor the CFTC has committed to a joint approach on equity perpetuals. Treating either filing as a preview of policy would be speculation, and it should be labelled as such.

The concrete thing to watch is whether the two agencies produce anything joint at all, in any form: a shared statement, a coordinated concept release, or a formal harmonisation proceeding. Until one of those exists, the deepest equity perp liquidity stays where it is and onchain venues keep building for a customer base that is legally somewhere else.