Crypto Exchanges

Story: CFTC Greenlights Kalshi Crypto Futures and Hands Coinbase a No-Action Shield

By Jean-Luc Maracon

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What the No-Action Letter Actually Means. No-action letters get misread constantly. They're not approvals.

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The 24/7 Trading Guidance. The advisory the CFTC put out covers the operational requirements for platforms that want to run…

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What Comes Next for Both Platforms. Kalshi needs to actually build out and launch the product now that approval is in hand.

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Kalshi got the green light. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission formally approved the event-based futures platform to offer cryptocurrency perpetual futures contracts — a…

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And Coinbase didn't walk away empty-handed either. The CFTC issued the exchange a no-action letter, which basically means the agency won't chase enforcement action against…

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Both decisions landed alongside a broader advisory from the CFTC laying out what platforms actually need to do if they want to run 24/7 crypto futures trading.

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No-action letters get misread constantly. They're not approvals. They don't give a platform a permanent pass.

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Kalshi's situation is different. Kalshi got actual approval, not a placeholder. The platform can move forward with offering perpetual futures in the crypto space.

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Perpetual futures are kind of wild products by traditional finance standards. They never settle in the conventional sense.

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See also: CFTC Clears Kalshi to Offer Bitcoin Perpetual Futures in U.S. Market

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The guidance addresses risk management specifically. Platforms need systems capable of handling the unique pressures of non-stop trading: margin calls at 3 a.m.

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It's worth noting that the CFTC releasing this kind of operational guidance at all is a shift.

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Kalshi needs to actually build out and launch the product now that approval is in hand. That's not trivial — perpetual futures require infrastructure that's different from the…

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Other platforms watching this are probably running their own calculations. If the CFTC is willing to approve perpetual crypto futures and issue no-action letters while companies…

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See also: CME Group Launches 24/7 Crypto Futures Trading, XRP and Cardano in Focus

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