Kalshi to Offer Crypto Perpetual Futures on April 27

Kalshi will start offering crypto perpetual futures on April 27 and will add commodities contracts for soybeans, wheat, sugar, copper, nickel and lithium to its Chicago-based exchange.

Perpetual futures have no expiration date; traders can hold positions indefinitely if they maintain required margin. These contracts typically include built-in leverage, which increases both potential gains and potential losses. Kalshi recently obtained a license to offer margin trading, a capability that supports leveraged products.

The Chicago-based exchange, known for event-based prediction contracts tied to sports, politics and other real-world events, already offers standard event contracts for crypto prices. The new perpetual futures extend the firm’s crypto trading products beyond those event listings.

Kalshi opened a commodities hub that links contracts to major physical markets and expanded its offerings beyond existing oil, gold and silver markets. The company called the expansion a “huge expansion of the breadth of commodities listed on the platform.” The new agricultural and metals contracts will sit alongside Kalshi’s growing crypto and energy markets and are available to retail users.

Kalshi has begun supplying real-time event contract data to a financial research firm’s AI product under a commercial arrangement. The exchange described the agreement as its first paid data partnership with a research subscriber.

Trading activity has increased on some existing contracts. A weekly oil-and-gas contract that tracks where the price of a barrel will finish on Friday recorded about $1.3 million in trading volume in a single week.

Industry data show perpetual futures account for a large share of global crypto trading, with top centralized exchanges recording $86.2 trillion in annual perpetual futures volume last year, a 47% increase from 2024. The chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has expressed a desire for the agency to bring perpetual futures under its oversight.

A rival prediction market operator has announced plans to expand into perpetual futures trading. That platform runs on public blockchains and settles many trades in a stablecoin.

Perpetual futures carry higher risk than simple outcome contracts because of leverage and ongoing funding payments that traders must monitor.

The April 27 launch follows Kalshi’s recent regulatory approvals and product expansions aimed at broadening market access for retail investors.