Coinbase Seeks CFTC Approval for US Single-Stock Perpetual Futures

Coinbase Derivatives has filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to list a suite of cash-settled perpetual futures referencing individual U.S.-listed stocks and exchange-traded funds. The exchange said it intends to offer 24/5 trading on the contracts, running from 8 p.m. ET Sunday through 5 p.m. ET Friday, and plans to list them shortly after obtaining CFTC approval and any other required regulatory clearances. As of the filing, the CFTC docket status is "Approval Pending (45)."

The filing classifies the products as security futures, which places them under joint supervision of the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Coinbase Derivatives is a CFTC-designated contract market and is notice-registered with the SEC as a national securities exchange for trading security futures products. The exchange used an Apple contract as a representative example in the submission and said the broader lineup would reference liquid U.S.-listed equities and ETFs that meet its listing standards.

Each proposed contract would have no fixed expiration and be settled in dollars rather than in shares. Coinbase would calculate a reference index intended to track the underlying security across premarket, regular, after-hours and overnight sessions. To keep futures prices aligned with those reference values, the contracts would use an hourly funding mechanism: longs pay shorts when the contract trades above the reference price and shorts pay longs when it trades below. The filing describes a rate derived from three-minute price readings, smoothed against the prior hour and capped at plus or minus 0.10% per hour.

Central clearing for the products would be provided by Nodal Clear. The representative Apple contract in the filing uses a contract size equal to 0.01 times the Apple index, yielding a notional around $2.25 when Apple trades near $225; Coinbase said other contracts would follow the same structure with security-specific parameters. The Wall Street Journal, cited by Coinbase, reported the company plans roughly 50 to 60 contracts including names such as Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia and suggested a potential launch later this year if regulators approve, although those specifics do not appear in the public CFTC submission reviewed by Converge.

The proposal follows Coinbase's June introduction of four perpetual-style equity-index futures tied to thematic baskets, which brought the perpetual format onshore without granting direct exposure to individual company shares. Even if approved, the new single-stock perpetuals would confer synthetic exposure only and would not provide stock ownership, voting rights or actual shares. The next step is a CFTC decision on the approval request; until the commission acts, U.S. customers cannot trade the proposed contracts and no firm trading date has been published.