"The institutions are coming." Are they? The first full month of data since the CFTC opened the door to US-regulated crypto perps shows the promised wave has yet to come onshore.
Kalshi Perps Have Yet to Break Early Upper Bound
Kalshi perps weekly hasn't had a day over $1.5B volume since June 17. This Monday showed a promising resurgence in volumes, but was still only the 4th largest day since Kalshi launched regulated crypto perps on June 4.
BTC and ETH volumes dominate, but two tokens with degen cred—Hyperliquid (HYPE) and Solana (SOL)—are above the long tail with $559M and $293M in cumulative volume, respectively. Among the rest, XRP and DOGE are the largest, with $153M and $135M cumulative, respectively.
Coinbase's Deribit Isn't Catching Offshore Wave
When it approved Kalshi's BTC perpetual futures contract, the CFTC also opened a door for Coinbase, with a no-action letter that could allow sophisticated US investors to trade on Deribit, Coinbase's offshore derivatives subsidiary. But as with many institutional floodgates, the promised liquidity appears to be at low ebb. Deribit's perpetuals contracts have visibly slowed their volume pace in July, with days over half a billion dollars coming less frequently than they did during June. Deribit perps' average day since June 4 (the date Kalshi perps launched) now sits at $515M.
Besides BTC ($16.3B) and ETH ($4.0B), nothing here cleared over even half a billion dollars in cumulative volume in this time period. Solana (SOL) cleared $292M; Pax Gold (PAXG) cleared $117M. Everything else was under $100M, with Algorand (ALGO) at the lowest rung, just $1.6M total.
Coinbase's Onshore Perpetual-Like Contracts Remain Calm
Since July, 2025, Coinbase has offered perpetual-like futures contracts on crypto assets, with 5-year expiries that make them de facto similar to never-expiring perps. These also haven’t seen any visible benefit from the CFTC's May ruling—and possibly are seeing some movement of US capital into newly opened alternatives like Kalshi, Deribit, and Kraken.
Since launch, almost exactly one year ago to date, Coinbase's FCM perps have had 12 days over $1.5B, about once a month. It’s now overdue: Coinbase FCM hasn't had a $1.5B-plus volume day since a surge on June 4, the date Kalshi launched its perps.
Here, the next-largest market after XRP ($803M) and Solana (SOL, $756M) is Zcash (ZEC) with $367M in cumulative volume, followed by Stellar (XLM, $355M) and Hyperliquid (HYPE, $246M).
Kraken's Bitnomial Perps Volume Is Building; Long Way to Catch Kalshi
Kraken is the only exchange operator showing a visible uptrend in regulated perpetual futures volume, starting June 15, when Kraken announced compliant crypto perps on its Bitnomial subsidiary. For now, though, the numbers here have an "M" after them, instead of a "B" like the other venues tracked here.
Interesting to see Cardano (ADA) here among the top-traded assets; with $3.7M in cumulative volume, it’s just below Solana (SOL, $4.1M). Everything else here cleared less than $1M total, except XRP ($2.0M) and Stellar (XLM, $1.8M).
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