Kalshi Plans U.S. Crypto Perpetual Futures, Targeting Coinbase and Robinhood

Kalshi, the prediction markets venue that spent years fighting regulators for the right to let Americans wager on elections and sports, is now lining up a much bigger swing. The company is preparing to roll out crypto trading in the United States, beginning with perpetual futures on tokens like bitcoin, people familiar with the plan told reporters at The Information. That puts Kalshi on a collision course with Coinbase and Robinhood, two companies that thought their derivatives roadmaps were safe from a prediction markets upstart.

The twist here is the product. Perpetuals are the bread and butter of offshore crypto, not U.S. retail brokerage. Kalshi wants to change that.

Why Perpetuals, Why Now?

For most of the last decade, if you wanted to trade perpetual futures on bitcoin or ether, you had to use Binance, Bybit, or one of the other non-U.S. venues that dominate the category. These contracts let traders take leveraged positions on price without owning the underlying token and without any fixed expiration date. Funding payments flow between longs and shorts to keep the contract price tethered to spot.

That funding mechanic is what makes perpetuals different from the quarterly futures that CME has offered for years. It is also what has made them the single most liquid product in crypto globally. Kalshi, which already holds several licenses from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, wants a piece of that liquidity onshore.

Coinbase Is Already Inching In

Coinbase (COIN) has not been sitting still. The exchange rolled out what it calls perpetual-style futures with long-dated expirations, and executives have said for months that they want to bring the real thing onshore once the rules allow. The difference is that Kalshi now has something Coinbase is still waiting for: regulatory green lights arriving in rapid succession.

In March, Kalshi secured approval to offer margin trading, a prerequisite for any serious derivatives business. One person familiar with the plans said the firm could extend the perpetual model to asset classes beyond crypto over time. Read that again. Equities perpetuals. Commodity perpetuals. All on a platform most Americans still think of as a place to bet on who wins Iowa.

Polymarket Is Not Going to Watch

On the same day The Information broke the Kalshi story, rival Polymarket posted on X that it also plans to launch perpetual futures. No timeline, no details, just a flag planted. The symmetry is not a coincidence.

Prediction markets and crypto exchanges have been converging for months. Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Gemini all added prediction market products this year while crypto spot volumes cooled after the market downturn. Meanwhile prediction market activity kept climbing, pulling in users and venture money. If your users already log in to bet on Fed decisions, selling them leveraged bitcoin is a short walk, not a pivot.

The cynical read on Kalshi's announcement: the company is not entering crypto because it believes in crypto. It is entering because the customer base it already has is the same customer base Coinbase is fighting to keep. Whoever offers the deepest menu wins the wallet.

Coinbase spent years earning the right to be the adult in the room. Kalshi just walked into the same room holding a better product.