Perpetuals move from bitcoin to copper
Kalshi has filed perpetual futures on a US large-cap index and on copper, while CME's suit over the first such approval is still live.
2 minInstitutional Crypto
Kalshi filed two perpetual futures contracts with the CFTC on 18 August. US500 tracks the MerQube US Large Cap Index, covering the 500 largest US-listed and US-based companies. COPPERPERP references the spot price of industrial copper in dollars per pound, using the Pyth Network XCU-USD feed.
The precedent it rests on
The CFTC approved Kalshi's bitcoin perpetual in May 2026, the first time such a contract could trade in the United States. In June, CME Group sued the agency, arguing it violated the Commodity Exchange Act in approving perpetuals for Kalshi and Coinbase.
So these filings extend a structure whose legality is being contested in court. The move from a crypto reference to an equity index and a physical commodity is the substantive step: a perpetual on bitcoin sits in a market already comfortable with the instrument, while a perpetual on copper does not.
The oracle choice is the part institutional readers should look at hardest. COPPERPERP settles against a price feed from a decentralised oracle network rather than an exchange print or an assessed benchmark. That is a different assurance model from what a copper hedger currently relies on, and it is stated in the filing rather than buried.
Nothing here is approved yet. A filing is a proposal, and the outcome depends partly on a lawsuit that has not been decided.
Retold from The Block. This is a summary in our own words; follow the link for the original reporting.