$90 trillion crypto perpetuals market: Former regulators push to bring it back to the US

Ninety trillion dollars on the run. Five former U.S. regulators, including a former CFTC chair, submitted a joint letter to the SEC and the CFTC at the end of August, calling for a regulatory framework calibrated to actual risk rather than the fear of it. The target: perpetual contracts, those undated derivatives that have become the dominant format for crypto trading, yet currently thrive almost entirely outside U.S. borders. The demand hasn't vanished; it has simply changed its address.

The perpetual market has headed offshore, targeting $90 trillion

A perpetual contract is a derivative that bets on an asset's price without ever expiring, unlike a classic futures contract tied to a delivery date. In other words: a leveraged bet that can be kept open indefinitely, as long as you pay the funding fee that keeps it tethered to the spot price. This format has become the standard for crypto trading elsewhere in the world, while U.S. regulation has long kept it at arm's length.

According to estimates from Kalshi, the predictive betting platform that has been offering its own crypto perpetuals since this year, the offshore volume surged from $28 trillion to over $90 trillion between 2023 and 2025—a threefold increase in just two years. The letter filed with the SEC is a response to a joint consultation launched in June by the two agencies, meant to clarify the jurisdictional boundaries between them regarding swaps and emerging derivatives.

Kalshi funds the push, five ex-regulators sign on for perpetuals

The signatories are no strangers to the field. Chris Giancarlo (former CFTC chair), Brian Quintenz and Sharon Brown-Hruska (both former commissioners of the same agency), Steven Wallman (former SEC commissioner), and Chester Spatt (former SEC chief economist): five careers spanning both agencies, free of any common partisan label. That is precisely the argument they are making. They emphasize that protecting investors and maintaining competitive U.S. markets has never been a left or right-wing issue.

Kalshi sponsored the initiative by commissioning the firm Bellementis to draft the document. To be perfectly clear, none of the signatories claim to have been paid, and the platform reportedly had no editorial control over the final content. Still, the fact that Kalshi is footing the bill is something the reader should know, rather than just burying it in a footnote. Chris Giancarlo sums up the stakes bluntly: "The $90 trillion offshore market for perpetuals is not a mystery to be solved; it is a market awaiting a sensible U.S. framework. If we calibrate federal regulation to actual risk rather than maximum restraint, this liquidity will return to our shores. Each year we wait makes that repatriation more difficult," he stated to Crypto In America.

Washington steps up efforts on crypto perpetuals

The letter arrives as several developments are moving forward in parallel. Donald Trump stated in early August that Michael Selig, the CFTC chair, was actively working to facilitate Hyperliquid’s landing on U.S. soil—the latter remaining the sector's largest offshore venue.

No single development guarantees the promised repatriation. Yet, three initiatives have moved forward in just four months: the CFTC framework in late May, the bipartisan letter in late August, and the SEC roundtable on September 17. All this, while the Clarity Act remains stalled in Congress. Hyperliquid, for its part, is already facing resistance from the CME and the NYSE in its own attempt to return to the U.S. market.

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