Coinbase Derivatives asked on October 1, and the Division of Market Oversight answered two days later by waiving the ten-business-day review for contracts that already run on funding rates. The same letter records that a KalshiEX broad-based index perpetual was deemed approved on October 2.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's Division of Market Oversight told futures exchanges on October 3 that it will not recommend enforcement action against one that removes the expiration dates from broad-based security index futures it already lists in a perpetual style. The relief, published as staff letter 26-29 and announced by the agency on October 5, expires on October 20.
Coinbase Derivatives, a designated contract market, asked for it in a request letter dated October 1. The reply, signed by DJ Hennes, the division's acting director, extends to that exchange and to any other designated contract market in the same position.
The contracts at issue are not new instruments. They already use "a periodic funding rate mechanism, rather than a fixed expiration date," which a footnote describes as maintaining "relative price parity with the underlying asset's spot price," but they carry an expiration anyway: "these perpetual-style futures had long-dated expiration dates, including up to 25 years," the letter says. Taking the date out is what makes them perpetual futures in the ordinary sense, and what the division waived is the procedural wait attached to that amendment. A self-certified rule change normally sits for ten business days under Commission regulations 40.6(a)(3) and 40.6(b)(1); the division said it will not recommend enforcement for amendments that take effect immediately on publication, and will not recommend or use delegated authority to seek a stay of the certification.
Eight conditions attach. An exchange may amend only contracts referencing broad-based security indices and may change no material term other than the expiration date. Before implementing, it has to solicit feedback from holders of open positions about possible adverse effects, give those holders at least five calendar days' notice, and let them close positions under the existing terms, with appropriate risk disclosures about the change. It must file the amendment under regulation 40.6(a) or 40.5, notify the division that it intends to rely on the letter, certify that it has met the conditions, and identify the specific contracts. A footnote adds that the division expects customers of intermediaries to count as market participants for the feedback, notice and exit conditions.
The letter also resolves a question that was open earlier this week. When Kalshi listed a perpetual future on an index it calls the US 500, the launch reports disagreed about what the Commission had done with the August filing behind it, and the filings docket could not be opened to settle it. Letter 26-29 records the disposition in passing: the Commission received a filing from KalshiEX LLC for a broad-based security index perpetual futures contract that was deemed approved on October 2 under the Part 40 review process. The Coinbase Derivatives contracts it addresses have mechanics that match that approved contract, which is the comparison the division used.
How many contracts are involved is not in the record. The letter names no index and gives no count, saying only that several of the existing perpetual-style contracts currently have open interest. The Commission's product filings page returns an interactive table that ran to 442 pages when read for this article, showing recent certified KalshiEX filings dated October 6 and 7 and no Coinbase Derivatives rows, so the October 2 approval is recorded here on the letter's own recital rather than confirmed separately in the docket. The accompanying press release names no requester and carries no quotes.
The relief is also narrower than the category it sits in. It reaches only contracts on broad-based security indices, which the letter situates in the Commodity Exchange Act's exclusive-jurisdiction provisions, and the letter says expressly that it does not apply to perpetual-style contracts referencing other assets. Perpetual futures on individual stocks are a different filing category: Coinbase Derivatives filed for those in September as security futures under rule 41.23(b), which the SEC and the CFTC oversee jointly, and whether cash-settled perpetuals should be classified by their economic structure rather than by the asset they reference is still being argued. Nothing in this letter settles that.
Nor does it bind the Commission. Staff no-action relief is the division's own position, and the letter quotes the rule that governs it: a no-action letter "binds only the issuing Division . . . and not the Commission or other Commission staff." The positions rest on the facts the requester presented, changed or omitted facts could void them, compliance with other requirements still applies, and the division said it may modify, suspend or terminate the relief at its discretion. Each contract submitted under the Commission's product rules is still assessed on its own terms.
What the letter does not explain is its own clock. It gives no reason for ending the relief on October 20, seventeen days after it was issued, and no explanation of why a ten-business-day wait was the obstacle worth removing from a contract whose expiration was as much as 25 years away.
