Ondo Finance wants Washington to stop treating perpetual futures as a foreign curiosity. The tokenization firm has formally asked the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to allow perpetual stock futures tied to individual US-listed shares, arguing that regulators already have the tools to bring a product currently confined to offshore markets back onto American soil.
Summary
Key takeaways
- On Aug. 24, Ondo Finance submitted three comment letters to both the SEC and CFTC, urging the regulatory bodies to classify perpetual futures on US stocks as security futures products.
- The company’s Panama-based affiliate already runs stablecoin-settled stock perpetuals offshore, hitting $8 billion in cumulative trading volume by Aug. 14, roughly six weeks after launch.
- Ondo says a fixed expiration date isn’t required for a contract to qualify as a security futures product, since recurring funding payments serve the same economic purpose.
- The SEC and CFTC signed a coordination memorandum in March to address overlapping oversight of onchain derivatives and tokenized securities.
- Hyperliquid Policy Center filed a similar request the same day, and former SEC counsel Ashley Ebersole estimates formal rulemaking could take 10 to 12 months.
Ondo’s Case for Bringing Stock Perpetual Futures Onshore
Ondo’s central argument is straightforward: US law doesn’t need to be rewritten to accommodate perpetual futures, it just needs to be applied differently. The company says existing security futures rules can already stretch to cover these contracts, without waiting for Congress or a brand-new regulatory category.
The Aug. 24 Filings to SEC and CFTC
On Aug. 24, Ondo submitted three separate comment letters to the SEC and CFTC. Together, the filings touch on product classification, margin requirements, and how blockchain-based pricing data should factor into regulatory decisions. Rather than proposing something entirely new, Ondo is pushing both agencies to apply the framework already used for security futures — instruments jointly overseen by the SEC and CFTC — to contracts tracking individual stocks.
The company didn’t shy away from framing this as low-hanging fruit for regulators. Many of the shares referenced in its offshore perpetual contracts are, after all, primarily traded on US exchanges already. “Bringing that activity back to the U.S. should not be an open question; it’s something both agencies should actively pursue,” Ondo told regulators.
Why Expiration Dates Don’t Matter, According to Ondo
A big chunk of Ondo’s argument hinges on a technical but consequential point: does a security futures product need a fixed expiration date? Ondo says no. “Nothing in the statutory definition of a security futures product requires a fixed expiration date,” the company wrote in its product-classification letter.
That distinction matters because it’s the legal hinge on which the entire proposal swings. Traditional futures settle on a set date. Perpetuals don’t. If regulators accept that the absence of an expiry date isn’t disqualifying, the door opens for perpetual stock futures to slot into a regulatory category that already exists, rather than requiring lawmakers to build something from scratch.
How Perpetual Futures Actually Work
Instead of expiring, perpetual contracts rely on recurring funding payments to stay tethered to the price of the underlying stock. When a perpetual trades above its reference price, traders holding long positions typically pay those holding short positions. When it trades below that reference price, the payments flow the other way.
That back-and-forth creates a built-in incentive for the perpetual’s price to converge with the value of the actual stock — which is exactly the argument Ondo is making to regulators. The company contends this funding mechanism performs the same economic role that a settlement date plays in a conventional futures contract, just continuously rather than at a single point in time.
None of this is theoretical for Ondo. Its Panama-based affiliate already runs stablecoin-settled stock perpetuals for eligible users outside the United States, and the numbers have been hard to ignore: $8 billion in cumulative trading volume by Aug. 14, reached roughly six weeks after the platform launched. That’s the kind of traction that tends to get regulators’ attention, even when the activity itself is happening offshore and out of reach of US-based traders.
A Regulatory Landscape in Motion
Ondo isn’t lobbying into a vacuum. The SEC and CFTC have been actively working to harmonize how they oversee products that blur the line between securities and derivatives, and that groundwork is exactly what Ondo is trying to leverage.
SEC-CFTC Coordination and Hyperliquid’s Parallel Push
Back in March, the two agencies signed a coordination memorandum aimed at addressing exactly this kind of overlap — cases where a product could plausibly fall under both securities law and futures law, as onchain derivatives and tokenized securities increasingly do. Security futures sit squarely in that gray zone, since the SEC oversees securities markets while the CFTC regulates US futures venues.
Ondo isn’t the only firm testing that coordination. The Hyperliquid Policy Center filed a comparable request on the same day, Aug. 24, arguing that equity perpetual markets with futures-like characteristics should also be treated as security futures. The group pointed to Hyperliquid’s own markets processing more than $480 billion in cumulative notional volume during their first 10 months — a scale that underscores just how much trading activity currently sits outside US oversight.
The political backdrop adds another layer. In August, President Trump stated that Michael Selig, who chairs the CFTC, was engaged in efforts to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a “fully compliant and legal fashion,” though neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid has spelled out how that access would actually work. The comments alone were enough to move markets: HYPE, Hyperliquid’s native token, jumped more than 20% afterward and has gained nearly 49% over the past month, trading around $81.
Transfer Agent Rules and Tokenized Securities
The SEC has also been moving on a separate but related front. On Tuesday, the agency proposed updating its decades-old transfer agent rules to account for blockchain-based recordkeeping and tokenized securities — a signal that regulators are rethinking market infrastructure built for a pre-blockchain era, not just the products that trade on top of it.
What Comes Next for Perpetual Stock Futures in the US
Nothing about this is guaranteed to move quickly. Former SEC counsel Ashley Ebersole estimated that building a formal US regulatory pathway for onchain perpetuals could take 10 to 12 months if the agencies pursue full rulemaking — though he noted the process could move faster if regulators instead lean on authority they already have.
Why does this matter beyond Ondo itself? If the SEC and CFTC accept the argument that funding payments can substitute for expiration dates, it would effectively validate a product structure that’s already generating billions in offshore volume, and it would give US investors a regulated on-ramp to something they currently can’t legally access at home. That’s a meaningful shift for a market structure question that, until recently, barely registered outside crypto-native circles.
It also matters for competitive positioning within the tokenization industry. Ondo currently It holds the fourth position among managers of tokenized real-world assets, commanding approximately $2.6 billion in total distributed value as reported by RWA.xyz. A green light on perpetual stock futures wouldn’t just open a new product line — it would hand early movers like Ondo and Hyperliquid a head start in a market segment that, if approved, every major exchange and brokerage would likely want a piece of.
For now, the ball sits with regulators. Ondo’s request wouldn’t automatically greenlight every stock perpetual contract — exchanges, brokers, and clearing organizations would still need to satisfy the registration, listing, margin, and customer-protection requirements that already govern security futures. But the filings mark one of the clearest efforts yet to translate offshore crypto-native trading volume into a formal US regulatory conversation, and the coming months should show whether the SEC and CFTC are prepared to treat perpetual stock futures as a natural extension of existing law or as something that still needs new rules written around it.
FAQ
What is Ondo Finance requesting from US regulators?
Ondo Finance is asking the SEC and CFTC to allow perpetual futures tied to individual US stocks under existing security futures rules.
How do perpetual futures differ from traditional futures contracts?
Perpetual futures do not have a fixed expiration date and use recurring funding payments to keep prices aligned with the underlying stock, unlike traditional futures which settle on a set date.
What is the significance of Ondo’s offshore trading volumes?
Ondo’s Panama-based affiliate’s offshore platform recorded $8 billion in trade volume within six weeks, demonstrating market interest and scale for stock perpetual futures.
How might the SEC and CFTC coordinate on regulating perpetual futures?
The SEC and CFTC signed a memorandum in March to harmonize oversight of overlapping jurisdictions such as security futures and onchain derivatives, facilitating joint regulation.
Article produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by the editorial team.
