Kalshi is preparing a regulatory filing with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to launch a never-expiring oil futures contract tied to the WTI crude benchmark, according to reporting confirmed across multiple sources. The filing is expected the week of September 8.
The contract would operate 24 hours a day, five days a week, and borrow its structural mechanics directly from cryptocurrency derivatives markets: no expiration date, continuous rolling settlement, and perpetual funding rates that let traders hold positions indefinitely. Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated prediction market platform, would be importing a trading model native to crypto into traditional energy markets for the first time at scale in U.S. commodity futures.
The move marks an expansion of Kalshi's footprint beyond binary event contracts into derivatives on physical commodities. The company has operated under CFTC oversight since 2021 and has won approval for prediction markets on political outcomes, macroeconomic data releases, and sports results. A perpetual contract on WTI would require fresh regulatory clearance and would compete in a market where the New York Mercantile Exchange currently dominates crude oil futures trading through contracts with fixed expiration cycles.
Perpetual futures on cryptocurrencies have become standard at platforms like Bybit, Deribit, and OKX, where they account for billions of dollars in daily volume. The mechanics rely on funding rates, periodic payments between long and short traders that keep the perpetual price anchored to the underlying spot price. A WTI perpetual would apply the same pricing mechanism to crude oil, a market with far larger notional open interest but less familiarity with such instruments at retail scale.
Kalshi's application arrives as the CFTC has grown more receptive to digital asset infrastructure within traditional commodity markets. In July 2024, the agency approved the first spot bitcoin ETF listings; by early 2026, it had cleared ether futures and expanded guidance on crypto derivatives trading. The agency has not yet responded to perpetual commodity contracts proposed by non-crypto entities.
If approved, the contract would operate in a regulatory gray zone that remains unsettled. The CFTC has jurisdiction over futures contracts on commodities but has historically required expiration dates to prevent indefinite accumulation of open positions and to force periodic repricing. Funding rates are designed to manage that risk in crypto markets, but their applicability to crude oil, a physically settled commodity with geopolitical price drivers, has not been tested in a U.S. regulatory framework.
The filing is expected within a week. The document to watch is the CFTC's response to Kalshi's application, which will determine whether the commission treats perpetual commodity contracts as equivalent to fixed-expiration futures or as a new product category requiring separate rulemaking.
