Crypto.com and Coinbase Both File to Put Perpetual Futures on Single US Stocks

Two crypto exchanges moved on the same product this week. Coinbase has filed to bring perpetual futures on individual US stocks to the American market, with contracts awaiting regulatory approval, Cointelegraph reported. Crypto.com has registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission for single-stock futures and is working with both the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on US single-stock perpetuals, chief executive Kris Marszalek said, according to The Block.

A perpetual future is a derivative with no expiry date. Instead of settling on a fixed day, it is tethered to the price of the underlying asset by a funding payment exchanged between longs and shorts at regular intervals, which pulls the contract back towards spot when it drifts. Crypto markets have traded them for years. American equity markets have not, because a product with no expiry and continuous funding does not fit neatly inside the futures rules that govern stock derivatives.

What is being proposed

Coinbase's proposal is for trading on a 24/5 basis, Cointelegraph reported, meaning around the clock on weekdays rather than within the hours of the American cash session. That schedule is the obvious point of the exercise. The attraction of a perpetual on Nvidia or Tesla is not leverage, which already exists in listed options and futures, but the ability to trade the exposure at three in the morning on a Tuesday.

Marszalek said separately that OG.com, Crypto.com's sister exchange, has been cleared by the SEC to offer single-stock futures to US users, according to Cointelegraph. Crypto.com's own SEC registration for single-stock futures is a step towards the same market, and the perpetual version remains under discussion with the two agencies rather than approved.

Derivatives, not tokens

None of this is tokenization. A perpetual future on Apple is a bet on Apple's price; it conveys no share, no dividend and no vote, and the buyer never touches the equity. That distinction matters this week in particular, because the SEC's separate exemption for tokenized stock trading deliberately excluded synthetic instruments that merely track a price. A perpetual future sits on the derivatives side of that line, supervised as a futures contract rather than as a security that represents ownership.

For an exchange, the derivative route has an administrative appeal. There is no share to custody, no transfer agent, no corporate action to process when the company splits its stock or pays a dividend, and no issuer with a say in whether its shares may be wrapped. There is a funding rate and a margin engine, both of which a crypto venue already runs.

What has to happen next

Both filings are pending. Coinbase's contracts await approval, Cointelegraph reported, and Crypto.com describes its perpetual ambitions as work in progress with the regulators. Registration is not permission, and the question the agencies have to settle is how a contract with no expiry and a continuous funding payment is classified, margined and surveilled when the thing it references trades on a national exchange for six and a half hours a day.

The second question is what happens to the contract when the underlying market is shut. A perpetual that keeps trading overnight and at weekends will price a stock when no stock is trading, and the funding mechanism will do the work of holding it near a reference that has stopped updating. That gap between a live derivative and a closed cash market is the practical problem, and it is the one worth watching in whatever the agencies eventually publish.