Kalshi Oil Perpetual Faces Regulatory Hurdles with 24/5 Trading Schedule
Kalshi, a US-regulated exchange that won approval for a Bitcoin perpetual in May, is preparing to ask the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to approve a perpetual futures contract tied to West Texas Intermediate crude oil. If approved, it would be the first oil perpetual to trade on a regulated US platform and would move a product structure built in crypto into the benchmark US oil market.
However, Kalshi's reported plan separates contract maturity from trading hours and from the reliability of the market being tracked. The exchange plans to offer the WTI contract 24 hours a day, five days a week, leaving it closed during the period when an always-on oil price would be most useful.
The CFTC has asked whether a perpetual could reference a physical assessment, a futures contract, or some composite of the two without creating an unreliable or easily manipulated price. Kalshi's existing Bitcoin perpetual shows the crypto model, trading 24/7 and using the CF Benchmarks Bitcoin Real-Time Index, which updates every second.
The CFTC's approval rested in part on Bitcoin's globally distributed and continuously observable spot trading. The strongest use case for an oil perpetual is the one Kalshi left out: a company seeking a persistent hedge around oil-sensitive revenue or costs could hold one instrument across successive delivery months, with the contract managing each transition while the position stayed open.
A Dune study of trading on the crypto venue Hyperliquid found that its WTI perpetual explained about three-quarters of the move when conventional futures reopened. However, Kalshi's reported 24/5 design gives up this weekend price-discovery function.