Kalshi is moving beyond event contracts into a higher-risk product line. A report published Thursday said the company plans to seek approval for the first regulated perpetual futures tied to individual stock shares, including Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia.
Perpetual futures, or perps, never expire. Traders can stay long or short around the clock, add leverage, and ride gains or losses until they close the trade or get liquidated. Kalshi is targeting about 60 contracts on stocks with a minimum market cap of $100 billion and on widely traded exchange-traded funds.
Just this week, Kalshi listed gold and silver perps and kept adding volume in crypto perps launched in late May. This sequence of additions makes the equity perps plan look like the next major chapter in Kalshi’s growth plan, not some side experiment to test the waters.
Single-Stock Perps Raise the Stakes
Two primary risk factors come with perps: leverage and a 24/7 clock. Because the contract has no end date and only resolves when you exit the market, a winning position can compound while a losing position can keep bleeding.
Offshore desks have already proven the appetite for this kind of event-market asset. On Hyperliquid, single-stock perp volume jumped to $212 billion from $4 billion at the start of the year. Kalshi wants a U.S. regulated version of that Hyperliquid perp, but trading on the highest-profile stock names.
Kalshi cannot copy the offshore menu overnight. Individual equity futures fall under security-futures rules so that a launch would need sign-off from both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Coinbase has also filed paperwork that could let it offer single-stock perps, turning approval for this investment asset class into a race.
Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour has been selling the product for months. In a June CNBC interview, he called perps the “purest form of trading” and pointed to more than $90 trillion in annual offshore volume that U.S. venues had left sitting abroad.
Crypto First, Metals Next, Equities After That
Kalshi’s first regulated perps were crypto contracts cleared in late May. Those products generated $44 billion in notional volume. Later, the CFTC approved gold and silver perp listings that went live this past week.
Udesh Jha, chief risk officer at Kalshi Klear, told CNBC that metals came next because gold and silver already have an inflation story that traders on Kalshi already easily recognize. Commodity event contracts on metals and oil crossed $400 million in seven months, reaching that mark in half the time crypto event contracts needed.
Kalshi’s own note on GOLDPERP and SILVERPERP describes cash-settled contracts that trade all week and skip the monthly roll. The company has also filed for perps on U.S. equity indexes, copper, and currencies. The product expansion ball keeps on rolling.
A second CNBC interview, taped after crypto perps crossed $1 billion in a week, captured the same pitch in fewer words:
How the Contract Pays, and How It Can Wipe Out a Trader
Perps do not require ownership of the stock, coin, or metal. A funding rate keeps the contract near spot, while isolated margin is meant to contain losses at the position level. Kalshi has used 5x leverage as an example: a $1,000 exposure can sit on $200 of posted margin.
That efficiency is both the sales hook and the hazard. A good trader doesn’t wait for an expiration calendar. A wrong trader can lose the posted margin if prices gap while cash equities are closed and perps keep running 24×7.
Kalshi is wrapping the product in exchange plumbing: federal oversight, a clearinghouse, and cash settlement instead of delivery. Even so, the push is part of a wider race to list leveraged trades that some market veterans still treat as too fast and too opaque for a mass audience. We’ll see some riches-to-rags stories around this product in the media at some point.
A Tesla or Nvidia perp would force a sharper question than a bitcoin contract. Is this a hedge with a public price, or a leveraged side bet on a company most people already know from the stock tape?
The Filing Fight Will Decide How Far This Goes
Kalshi spent 2026 raising capital while it battled state cases over sports event contracts, which still account for the vast majority of its overall trading volume. A May round led by Coatue Management valued the firm at $22 billion after a $1 billion raise. Institutional funding concerns seem optimistic in Kalshi’s business cases, even given the risks of its sports event contract business.
Single-stock perps would move Kalshi closer to equity derivatives and put the SEC in the room. That dual path is slower than a commodity listing and gives opponents more time to argue that retail traders should not have weekend leverage on individual names. But Kalshi’s business development history, while not ancient, shows steady expansion. Relentlessly so.
Kalshi’s crypto perps found size immediately. Metals listed this week after commodity event contracts scaled to $400 million. Offshore single-stock perps on Hyperliquid grew more than fifty-fold in 2026. This market looks incredibly ripe.
If the filings clear, Kalshi’s “risky trading” headline becomes a product list guaranteed to gain at least initial traction.
References
- The Wall Street Journal, “Kalshi Looks to Expand a Rapidly Growing Universe of Risky Trading”
- Krystal Hur, WSJ author page
- Vicky Ge Huang, WSJ author page
- Dow Jones Newswires recap on TradingView
- CNBC, Kalshi gold and silver perps launch
- Kalshi, “24/7 Gold & Silver Perpetuals Are Here”
- CNBC Television on YouTube: Mansour on perps
- CNBC Television on YouTube: Mansour on perp demand
- The New York Times, Kalshi $22 billion valuation
- U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- FinanceFeeds, Kalshi commodities volume
- Quartz, gold and silver perpetual futures
