Kalshi is applying to launch perpetual futures contracts on US stock indices, further expanding into the traditional exchange market.

BlockBeats News, August 18th, Prediction market platform Kalshi has submitted regulatory documents to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to launch a perpetual futures contract pegged to a stock index, further expanding from the prediction market to the traditional financial derivatives field.

The documents show that the perpetual futures contract "US500" to be launched by Kalshi will track the MerQube U.S. Large Cap Stock Index, which covers 500 large publicly traded companies in the U.S. The perpetual futures contract has no expiration date, and traders do not need to hold the underlying asset. The contract will continuously track the underlying price through a funding rate mechanism.

By the end of May this year, Kalshi had obtained approval to launch cryptocurrency perpetual futures and officially launched in June. The company subsequently applied to launch perpetual futures for gold, silver, and other precious metals, and this time further applied for copper and stock index perpetual futures.

Kalshi stated that by 2025, the global perpetual futures trading volume will exceed $90 trillion, with its own product's nominal trading volume surpassing $1 billion within a week of launch.

Kalshi's entry into perpetual futures has raised concerns among traditional exchanges. The stock prices of CME Group and Cboe Global Markets were under pressure due to the U.S. approval of domestic perpetual futures. CME even filed a lawsuit in federal court regarding the relevant regulatory approval. At the time of writing, CME was up approximately 1.26%, and Cboe was up approximately 0.12%.