Rules for the US crypto industry are changing fast under the Trump administration, with dropped enforcement actions at the Securities and Exchange Commission and a seemingly open attitude at the CFTC toward perpetual swaps. 
 

Regulators take a new look at perpetual futures 
 

In March 2025, the CFTC withdrew its aforementioned advisory note to “ensure that it does not suggest that its regulatory treatment of digital asset derivatives will vary from its treatment of other products.”
 

On April 21, the CFTC opened up to public comment regarding perps and derivatives markets. Acting Chair Caroline Pham said, “The CFTC is getting back to basics by requesting public comment on perpetual contracts that have seen significant interest recently from exchanges and market participants.”
 

As noted by Irwin, just two days later, CFTC-regulated designated contract market maker (DCM) Bitnomial self-certified a legal perpetual futures contract. 
 

Speaking at the Piper Sandler Global Exchange and Trading Conference, Pham reportedly said, “We’re not waiting for perps to go live, they’ve been live. They’ve been live on Bitnomial [...] They worked with the CFTC and our staff for over a year on what was the methodology, what was the pricing, what was the funding.” 
 

Under commodities law, DCMs can self-certify derivative products by filing a prospectus with the CFTC. 
 

A CFTC spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the agency will check that a product “complies with all of the requirements of the Commodity Exchange Act and relevant CFTC regulations.” It also checks that the proposed product is not susceptible to manipulation and that there are customer protections.
 

If the CFTC doesn’t object within a specified period, then the product is approved.
 

Greg Tusar, vice president for product management at Coinbase, said that his firm has been engaging with the commission on a peprtuals-like product. Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference on June 10, Tusar said the exchange “worked with the CFTC to replicate a lot of those features,” such as a lack of expiry date.
 

“We have a product design that we’re now close to implementing and we’ll have a date to share shortly,” he said. 
 

The crypto perpetual futures market is huge
 

Perpetual derivatives represent a sizeable chunk of the crypto market. Adam McCarthy, a research analyst at Kaiko, told Bloomberg in April, “Essentially, the perps market has always been several orders of magnitude larger than the daily spot market [...] Perps have really been the heart and soul of the crypto market over the past decade.”
 

According to data from CoinMarketCap, open interest on perpetuals in the crypto market was $704 billion as of June 20.
 

Whether US crypto exchanges get the green light piecemeal on a by-product basis or receive clear guardrails from a new, incoming chair, some analysts believe retail investors are going to supply much of the demand.
 

“For the passive investors, I don’t think it is a massive product for them [...] It is going to be active traders, active market participants like some of the retail investors,” said Chris Newhouse, director of research at digital-asset venture fund Cumberland Labs.

 — AccGn News Team