From $1 Billion to $5.5 Billion
The growth has been rapid, and as per Bloomberg data, Kalshi’s perpetual futures have already racked up more than $5.5 billion in volume within their first two weeks on the platform. That follows an opening sprint in which the contracts blew past $1 billion in notional volume within seven days of going live. The latter seems to have been driven, in large part, by bets on the ongoing FIFA World Cup and the recently concluded NBA Finals.
Kalshi currently lists 11 perpetual contracts, all of them tied to crypto tokens (offering zero trading fees during the initial launch window to seed liquidity). Perpetual futures are derivatives that, unlike traditional futures, carry no expiry date and instead use a periodic funding rate to keep their price tethered to the underlying asset.
They have become among the most heavily traded products in crypto, and Kalshi is now planting a regulated flag in that market.
What separates Kalshi’s product from offshore venues is its regulatory standing, given that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) approved its spot bitcoin-linked perpetual, BTCPERP, last month, with the contract finally going live on June 3, making it the first true perpetual of its kind cleared for U.S. traders.
In fact, the CFTC framed the approval as a historic step toward bringing one of crypto’s most liquid derivatives onshore.
For a company built on binary event contracts (i.e. wagers on elections, economic data, and sports), the aforementioned move comes as a pivot of sorts into leveraged derivatives, pitting Kalshi against many crypto-native perp giants, all while giving U.S. users a compliant alternative they previously had to seek abroad.
Kalshi Is Not Stopping at Crypto
The platform said it is in talks with regulators about extending perpetual futures across other asset classes, a roadmap that would put it in competition with established commodity and equity derivatives venues. It is also racing rivals, recently overtaking Polymarket in monthly taker volume (with Polymarket itself unveiling its own U.S. perpetual futures plans).
The expansion is unfolding against a noisy legal backdrop as Kalshi recently sued the state of Minnesota to block a felony ban on prediction markets, while the CFTC has defended its jurisdiction in a parallel Massachusetts case. How those fights resolve will shape how far (and how fast) Kalshi can carry its $5.5 billion head start into new markets.
In any case, the two-week volume figure seems to suggest that solid demand for regulated, leveraged crypto exposure in the U.S. is far from satisfied.
