Points of Focus

• Kalshi self-certified LINK perpetuals with the CFTC on June 1, part of a 12-altcoin filing that followed its Bitcoin approval by just 72 hours.
• Bitcoin and Ether perps are already live; LINK and the remaining altcoins each require individual CFTC review before trading opens.
• Offshore perpetual futures volume hit $92.9 trillion in 2025, a market that has been entirely inaccessible to US traders until now.

Kalshi, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)-regulated prediction market platform, announced the launch of perpetual futures contracts on May 29, 2026, making it the first company in American history to offer the product class under domestic regulatory oversight.

The Chainlink certification was filed on June 1 under the KalshiEX platform alongside contracts tied to XRP (XRP), Solana (SOL), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Stellar (XLM), Sui (SUI), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Litecoin (LTC), Hedera (HBAR), Polkadot (DOT), and Bitcoin Cash (BCH), as confirmed by CFTC filings. Each contract requires individual regulatory clearance before trading opens. Kalshi has not confirmed a go-live date for LINK specifically.

JUST IN: Kalshi launches new LINK perps in an industry first for a U.S. company regulated by the CFTC https://t.co/T7BHcvvBds pic.twitter.com/RmeZI7MvyL

— Chainlink (@chainlink) June 8, 2026

How the product works and why the regulatory structure matters

A perpetual future is a position on the price of an asset that never expires. Traditional futures have a settlement date at which the contract closes. Perpetual futures remove that constraint entirely, letting traders hold positions indefinitely as long as they can cover their margin requirements.

The contracts operate through a funding rate mechanism adjusted every eight hours, which keeps the contract price tethered to the underlying spot market. Kalshi makes its funding rate history visible in the transaction history on its platform.

The CFTC approved Kalshi’s BTCPERP contract on May 29, 2026, under Commission Regulation 40.3. The contract references the spot price of Bitcoin and carries no expiration date, making it a structural departure from every futures product the US had previously authorized.

The size of the market Kalshi is targeting

Offshore perpetual futures trading volume exceeded $90 trillion annually as of 2026, roughly tripling from $28 trillion in 2023. This makes perpetuals arguably the single most traded product in all of crypto. Virtually all of that volume has flowed through platforms operating outside US jurisdiction.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour told CNBC that perpetuals are “the purest form of trading,” framing the launch as the company’s evolution from prediction market leader to a full-service derivatives exchange. “Onshore, safe, and regulated perps will improve capital allocation and risk management for countless American businesses,” Mansour said.

CFTC policy shift under Selig opened the door

CFTC Chair Michael Selig, appointed by President Donald Trump, signaled the policy shift in March 2026, telling the Milken Institute that US-listed perpetual futures were coming “in the next month or so.” He called this milestone “a path for one of the most liquid segments of the crypto asset markets to exist within the US regulatory framework.”

In my first public remarks as @CFTC Chairman, I made clear that the agency would use the tools at its disposal to onshore crypto asset perpetuals. Today, the @CFTC delivered on that commitment.

This morning, the @CFTC took historic action to permit the listing of a true bitcoin…

— Mike Selig (@ChairmanSelig) May 29, 2026

In its order, the CFTC indicated that a case-by-case process would be appropriate for US companies eager to list perpetual futures beyond Bitcoin, noting that the class of derivatives overall may not be suitable for all asset classes.

Competition is already building

Kraken said it plans to list CFTC-regulated perpetual futures within 30 days of Kalshi’s approval, covering BTC and other crypto assets. Robinhood and Gemini have also expressed interest in entering the market, suggesting that regulated perpetual futures could become a major new battleground among US crypto trading platforms.

Polymarket has moved simultaneously, launching its own perpetual futures product on an invitation-only basis and planning to open access to the broader public in the coming weeks.

Kalshi is valued at $22 billion following a May 2026 funding round and plans to expand perpetuals to more than a dozen cryptocurrencies pending further regulatory reviews. Agricultural commodities are excluded from its planned product slate.

The LINK filing places Chainlink, whose oracle infrastructure already underpins the pricing feeds for the majority of decentralized finance, directly inside the perimeter of US-regulated derivatives markets for the first time.