源自加密货币领域的一种热门新型投注方式在华尔街引发地盘争夺战A Popular New Bet Hailing From Cryptoland Sets Off a Wall Street Turf War

A popular new type of bet that started in the crypto world is setting off a turf war on Wall Street.

Perpetual futures, known as perps, exploded in popularity overseas this year but had mostly been limited to crypto in the U.S. Then last week, Kalshi got regulatory approval to launch perps tied to more than 50 single stocks, including McDonald’s, SpaceX and Meta.

An industry group backed by market maker Citadel Securities and derivatives exchange Cboe Global Markets quickly sued to stop the contracts, escalating tensions that had been simmering for months between Wall Street’s establishment and newer players.

The lawsuit says single-stock perps skirt key investor protections and could have far-reaching consequences for the stock market, such as diverting trading from actual shares. Kalshi says the lawsuit is just an effort to quash competition.

In an interview, Kalshi Chief Executive Tarek Mansour said the single-stock perps became the company’s “most successful product launch ever” less than 24 hours after their initial launch on Tuesday.

Perps gained attention earlier this year when conflicts in the Middle East prompted a surge of trading in oil-linked perps on Hyperliquid, a decentralized crypto exchange. The contracts never expire and are appealing in part because they trade around the clock and allow leverage to amplify potential gains and losses.

Perps are one of several areas of finance that have flourished under President Trump, whose administration has encouraged newcomers including crypto firms and prediction markets. The inroads by relative newcomers have rattled Wall Street, with some heavyweights fighting to stamp them out and others racing to get in on the action.

Perps have been a particular source of friction. They already prompted another lawsuit earlier this year by the CME Group, which sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over its approval of crypto perps.

The new lawsuit against the CFTC argues that single-stock perps legally qualify as security-based swaps, which fall under the Securities and Exchange Commission’s jurisdiction.

If single-stock perps are classified as swaps, they would fall under strict SEC rules that restrict the market to institutional players, effectively banning everyday investors from trading them.

“This is just one in a series of decisions that have been implemented that we think are troubling, that relate to securities being offered to public customers outside of the securities regulatory regime that Congress adopted,” Craig Donohue, chief executive of Cboe, said in an interview.

Proponents of single-stock perps say the contracts could threaten the existing businesses of Wall Street incumbents such as Cboe, whose derivatives offerings include the increasingly popular zero-day-to-expiry options Perps could also pull volume away from market makers like Citadel Securities, potentially undermining the payment-for-order-flow fees that retail brokerages rely on to fund zero-commission trading, they say.

A Citadel Securities spokeswoman said the U.S. securities markets are the envy of the world. “Bypassing the rule of law to launch new risky financial products without time-tested investor protections, market integrity safeguards, and prudent risk management frameworks jeopardizes that very success,” she said.

A perp contract tracks an underlying asset, with two parties essentially betting on how its price will move without owning shares. Gains and losses are tied to the price of the actual stock. Critics say the setup essentially functions like a swap.

Don Wilson, founder of high-speed trading giant DRW, is among those who have endorsed the expansion of perps, calling them a “useful risk-management tool” that lets traders hedge positions.

In an interview, Wilson said perps are “a very clever approach” that let traders avoid expiring contracts and the cost of constantly rolling them over into new ones.

Other Wall Street heavyweights are also getting behind perps. Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, said recently that it plans to bring Hyperliquid-based perps to the U.S., pending regulatory approval. Still, the new market could soon hit a road bump.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni set an expedited briefing schedule to decide whether to halt the trading of single-stock perps. She noted that the lawsuit backed by Citadel and Cboe is “likely to succeed on the merits of its claim.”

In a statement, a spokesman for the CFTC said Cboe and other incumbents are attempting to undermine the administration’s “pro-innovation agenda.”“We look forward to winning this case,” the statement said.