CFTC-Regulated Perps’ Volume Deep Dive | Top Venues Drop Double Digits 📉

Kalshi's new CFTC-regulated bitcoin perpetual futures contract cleared about $5.7B in volume from its launch Thursday, June 4 through the close of trading June 18, showing mounting enthusiasm for the first regulated crypto perp in the market.

Kraken is a fast follower, chasing some of that volume with a suite of regulated crypto perps on its Bitnomial subsidiary. So far, they've seen a slower start, with volume in the low millions rather than the billions. Contracts in BTC, ETH, SOL, and XRP cleared a combined $2.3M in volume in their first four days of trading. A handful of altcoin markets (ADA, AVAX, DOGE, LINK, and LTC) showed little to no volume.

Meanwhile, both enthusiasm and resistance can be found around these US-regulated perpetual futures offerings.

Trading in regulated-adjacent crypto perps continued clearing about $1B a day, having briefly surged, the week after the CFTC announcement—in line with overall volume in perps that week. Coinbase's futures commission merchant (FCM) contracts are perpetual-like, with five year expiries, and the Coinbase / Deribit contracts are offshore, but accessible to US investors via a CFTC no-action letter issued the same date the agency approved the Kalshi BTC perp.

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Gauntlet and Robot Ventures' Tarun Chitra is talking about tokenized stocks in this tweet but he could be talking about perps listings. Similar crowd mentality. (Starting this week there is a Zhipu perp, btw, read below.)

 A few more good reads: The Digital Chamber's Birdnals on whether perps are swaps or futures, and one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time; 250 Digital Asset Management's Christopher Perkins (just acquired by Franklin Templeton) on what's at stake if perps are defined as swaps; and Stand With Crypto’s Shanice Best on the current "gacha meta" in onchain markets, where products rush to deliver the "pack opening" dopamine, without the mechanics for lasting engagement.

RWA perpetual futures volume dropped about 15% week over week, falling back to $91.7B after hitting $108.8B and an all-time high the prior week, which included SpaceX's IPO day. Equity perps were the only category that grew, week over week—to $55.6B from $48.4B, while commodity perps dropped to $25.0B from $41.5B and are now just 27% of the market, as equities reached 61%. That’s an astonishing shift: equities were less than 10% of the RWA perps markets, less than three months ago, and commodities dominated.  

SpaceX at the top of this chart is another shocker. The top asset by volume has been gold or WTI crude every week since the start of this newsletter in April. $9.8B of the SpaceX trading volume came on Tuesday, June 16, with volumes surging above the IPO day trading ($9.2B) as SPCX stock enjoyed a post-pop runup, before falling back nearer to Day 1 levels. S&P 500 index perps, normally a top 10 market led by Trade[XYZ], bubbled under at $1.8B in weekly volume.

The top two RWA perps markets by week-over-week volume growth are both AI-adjacent data storage stocks: Western Digital and Seagate—as the latter crossed $1,000 per share, last week. No. 3 is Bitmine, the ETH treasury company, in a perps trading surge alongside the NYSE trading start of its perpetual preferred shares (BMNP), the Ethereum analog to bitcoin treasury company Strategy’s STRC.

Nowhere near as much trading in new markets this week: $3.5M in average daily volume, vs. last week's $8.1M. Bitget continues to list the most new markets, but this week’s listings lagged the top new markets, as opposed to last week when Bitget dominated the top five with three new listings over $1M in daily volume. Trade[XYZ] listed Zhipu, the Chinese AI tech company, on Hyperliquid, but the perps just started trading, a few hours after the close of our weekly snapshot.

It was a down week for most exchanges, with Bybit and OKX basically flat as the two exceptions. Weekly RWA perps volume fell on Binance by 13% to $49.2B and on Hyperliquid by 29% to $16.7B.

In other exchange news, social trading platform Fomo raised a $75M Series B led by Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures, just a few days after announcing crypto & RWA perps trading powered by Hyperliquid. However, exchange pre-IPO perps pioneer Ventuals, a Hyperliquid HIP-3 builder, has announced it is shutting down. Volume on Ventuals had lagged fast followers in pre-IPO perps, including both HIP-3 competitor (and volume leader) Trade[XYZ], and offshore centralized exchanges like Binance and OKX. It’s part of a broader HIP-3 consolidation that includes Hyperliquid's wind-down of USDH, its native stablecoin, forcing operators like Felix to sunset or pivot.

This issue covers the week ending June 21, and draws on volume data from Aster, Binance, Bitget, Bybit, Coinbase International, Crypto.com, Dreamcash and Trade[XYZ] on Hyperliquid, EdgeX, Grvt, Kraken, Lighter, Orderly, and OKX.

If you have questions about methodology or other data you’re seeking, please get in touch: [email protected].