Trump administration's embrace of "perp" futures sets off risk alarms for Wall Street stalwarts
What happened
Wall Street exchanges and trading firms are warning that perpetual futures, which the Trump administration is bringing onshore, could add serious new risks to the US derivatives market, according to Reuters interviews with four executives.
Perpetual futures never expire and trade around the clock; they are often leveraged as much as 50 times and mostly bought by retail investors.
Trading in crypto perps hit $61.7 trillion in 2025, a 29 per cent rise on 2024, data provider CryptoQuant said.
In May the Commodity Futures Trading Commission formally approved US-listed crypto perps, and last week it also cleared single-stock equity perps.
CME Group is suing the regulator to overturn the May decision, arguing perps are wrongly classed as futures; a group backed by Cboe and Citadel Securities filed a similar suit last week over the equity approval.
The CFTC declined to comment on the executives' concerns and has said CME chose "lawfare" over competing in the new market.
“I think they've muddied the waters here significantly”
CNA
Summary written by AI from 3 independent sources (The Verge, CNA, Guardian) and checked automatically against them for copied text and numbers that are not in the sources. How we work
Open on the live globe →Who reported it
- 2026-11-08 22:54 UTCThe Verge · theverge.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 08:38 UTCEuronews · euronews.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 09:12 UTCMarketWatch · marketwatch.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 10:49 UTCAl Jazeera · aljazeera.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 11:07 UTCCNA · channelnewsasia.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 13:09 UTCGuardian · theguardian.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 13:47 UTCCBC · cbc.ca ↗
- 2026-11-09 14:30 UTCSCMP · scmp.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 18:46 UTCCNBC · cnbc.com ↗
- 2026-11-09 20:09 UTCTechCrunch · techcrunch.com ↗
More from United States of America
- Polls show Trump's party could lose control of Congress but they may be wrong 47 sources
- Treasury yields fall as investors crowd into bonds for safety amid election stock sell-off 45 sources
- Trump's midterm defeat gives the Gulf a chance to escape America's forever wars 27 sources
- US midterm elections 2026 live: Democrats exceed 250 House seats as blue wave sweeping Congress grows 27 sources
- Flavio Bolsonaro vows to lead opposition after Brazil court imposes travel ban 26 sources
- In huge blow to Republicans, Democrat Talarico flips U.S. Senate seat in Texas 26 sources
- US midterms: Five takeaways from Democrats’ sweeping victory 25 sources
- US midterm elections 2026: What are they and when will we know the results? 22 sources