Coinbase Files With the CFTC for 50-Plus Single-Stock Perpetuals

Coinbase Derivatives filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Friday to list perpetual futures on individual US stocks. The contracts settle in cash and carry no expiry date, so a buyer takes price exposure to a share without owning it, without a dividend and without a vote. Four accounts read for this piece put the batch at roughly 50 to 60 contracts, with Apple, Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia named in all four. None of them publishes the full list. Nothing trades until the commission clears the filing.

What the contract looks like

Forbes, writing on Saturday, is the only account that reads the specification itself. It gives the filing number as 2026-62 and treats the Apple contract as the representative spec: 0.01 of a share, which is $2.25 of exposure at the $225.10 reference price the filing uses. Trading would run from Sunday evening to Friday afternoon New York time, with funding payments charged hourly and capped at 0.10%. Clearing goes through Nodal Clear. Every element of that paragraph stands on one outlet. The filing itself was not retrievable from the commission's public database at the time of writing, so it is hedged here and kept out of the headline.

Two tracks, two regulators

A perpetual future is the crypto market's standard leveraged instrument, held open indefinitely while periodic funding payments pull the contract price toward the thing it tracks. Coinbase has offered stock perpetuals outside the United States since March, with US residents barred from them, and it was cleared earlier this year as the first US exchange to run regulated crypto perpetuals. The domestic equity version needs more than one clearance. Forbes reads the filing as treating the contracts as security futures products, a category that sits under joint CFTC and SEC oversight, and Coinbase filed Form 1-N with the SEC on 1 September to register as a national securities exchange for that category. Two accounts carry the Form 1-N date. One carries the jurisdictional reading.

The company's own words, twice

The announcement reaches two outlets in two shapes. CryptoRank has Coinbase describing itself as working to bring liquid, 24/5 exposure to individual stocks in the US for the first time. Cointelegraph renders the same statement as a plan to build on the company's existing US perpetual futures market, extending the structure beyond crypto assets. Neither account quotes the other, and we could not establish which wording is the company's own. Cointelegraph credits the Wall Street Journal for the contract count and the stock names, which is the only sourcing any of the four accounts gives for either.

Where the clock stands

Forbes puts the review at 45 days, running to 2 November, with a further 45 available if the questions turn out to be hard. Two other accounts say only that the products could arrive later this year if regulators approve. No account gives a launch date. The ground is contested already: Kalshi has its own plan for 60 single-stock perpetuals, Crypto.com is pursuing approvals through its OG.com exchange on one outlet's account, and the argument over whether a perpetual is a future at all is in court, where the regulator has asked a judge to throw out CME's suit.

Coinbase shares closed Friday at $194.25, up 11.7% by Forbes's count and 12% by CoinCentral's. Neither states the window it measured and the two do not reconcile. The larger open question is who gets to trade these. No account read here says whether retail accounts have access at launch, or whether the contracts start with institutions and open up later.