By Anirban Sen
NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuters) - Kalshi, a prediction markets platform that allows people to bet on events such as sports, election outcomes and weather, aims to expand into never-expiring derivatives products covering areas including metals, foreign exchange, and energy markets, a company executive said.
The platform aims to compete against traditional exchange operators by offering so-called perpetual futures which, unlike traditional derivatives contracts, do not have an expiration date
for the contract.
In May, Kalshi, launched the country's first perpetuals futures contracts for crypto trading, after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) cleared the decks for registered U.S. trading venues to offer such contracts. Now, the platform is seeking approval from the regulator to launch those offerings in other asset classes, the executive said.
Beyond crypto, "the other asset classes that we’re looking at are very much driven by the market, for instance, things like gold," said Udesh Jha, chief risk officer at Kalshi.
Jha said the company is in advanced discussions with regulators, seeking approval to expand perpetual futures to other asset classes including foreign exchange and energy.
"Gold is something that's coming up because it’s retail friendly. Our participants skew towards the retail side, but also institutional."
Perpetual futures contracts, also called "perps," are futures contracts without expiration dates. This means investors can hold positions in an asset indefinitely rather than closing them out or rolling them over. Perps also allow traders to borrow heavily, sometimes as much as 50 times the value of the contract, to amplify their bets.
Critics have warned that these types of contracts are risky for retail investors who may not fully grasp their complexity and could be exposed to heavy losses if prices move against them even by a small amount. CME's outgoing CEO Terry Duffy in June criticized the CFTC for allowing the rollout of perps, calling the products a "disaster waiting to happen."
Since then, CME has sued the CFTC and its chairman, Michael Selig, challenging the recent decision to let Kalshi and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase list perpetual futures. Many saw that lawsuit as an attempt to safeguard CME's position as the top U.S. derivatives exchange.
Jha said Kalshi is also eyeing potential opportunities to expand perpetual futures tied to broad-based indexes and individual stocks. Since the launch of these derivatives on Kalshi, perpetual contracts have accounted for trading volumes of $16.1 billion on the platform.
"Most of those asset classes we have to figure out how to enter, but FX, metals, and energy are probably the ones that because of geopolitics and seasonality are the most in demand from investors," Jha said. "If you look at the volumes that we have, a lot of that is coming primarily from institutional investors.”
COMPETITIVE THREAT
The latest moves from Kalshi, which have not been reported previously, come as traditional derivatives exchanges grapple with the potential disruption that perpetuals pose to their core businesses.
In the immediate aftermath of the CFTC's approval of perpetuals, the stocks of top U.S. exchange operators including CME, CBOE, Nasdaq, and New York Stock Exchange parent Intercontinental Exchange witnessed a sharp selloff on investor fears of increased competition for traditional derivatives.
In June, Kalshi co-founder Tarek Mansour told Bloomberg that the company was looking to expand perpetual futures, without specifying which other asset classes the company would target.
The CFTC is currently seeking public input on the potential expansion of perpetual contracts tied to delivered or storable energy commodities, such as crude oil, the regulator said in June.
Trading of perps in other asset classes, if approved, would take place during regular trading hours, not round the clock, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to speak publicly as the products are still under consideration.
Until recently, perpetual futures were largely traded on offshore venues. They had existed in a regulatory gray area, neither banned nor explicitly approved. Kalshi has estimated that trading perpetual futures on overseas platforms burgeoned to $90 trillion last year, more than triple the volume in 2023.
(Reporting by Anirban Sen in New York; editing by Megan Davies and David Gregorio)
