Kalshi Pushes into Traditional Equities with Single-Stock Perpetual Futures

Kalshi, a New York-based derivatives exchange, is expanding into traditional equities with plans to list perpetual futures contracts on individual stocks. The company has already gained approval for Bitcoin perpetual contracts and recently launched gold and silver perps. Now, it's seeking regulatory approval to introduce single-stock perpetual futures on Tesla, Apple, and Nvidia.

The proposed contracts would have a minimum market cap of $100B and an average daily trading volume of at least $450M. Each contract would represent 100 shares, with a margin requirement of around 15% of the notional value. The contracts would trade 23 hours a day, five days a week, and settle in cash without physical delivery.

Kalshi's plans have sparked concern from Citadel Securities, which fears that equity perpetual futures could create a parallel shadow market, potentially creating compliance blind spots around issues like insider trading, position reporting, and investor protection. CME Group also filed a lawsuit against the CFTC in June 2026 claiming that the agency improperly approved perpetual futures contracts.