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Removing the expiration treadmill
A conventional WTI futures contract expires during a specified month, forcing traders who want to keep exposure to close the expiring position and open another with a later maturity. Kalshi's proposed product would remove that recurring process, letting traders hold positions indefinitely provided they maintain sufficient collateral and meet the contract's requirements.
Perpetual futures normally use recurring payments or another price adjustment mechanism to keep their value close to the underlying reference market, and offshore crypto exchanges commonly use funding payments exchanged between long and short traders. Kalshi has not publicly disclosed how its WTI product would stay aligned with the oil benchmark, a detail that should become clearer if the exchange submits proposed contract terms to the CFTC.
The stakes are large. CME Group's benchmark WTI contract represents 1,000 barrels with physical delivery at Cushing, Oklahoma, and more than one million WTI futures and options contracts trade daily. Kalshi's reported contract may use cash settlement or another structure to avoid physical delivery, though nothing has been confirmed. CME is also preparing smaller 10-barrel WTI futures with continuous trading throughout the week, pending regulatory review.
Building on the Bitcoin perpetual
The planned oil product would expand Kalshi's use of perpetual futures beyond crypto. The CFTC approved the exchange's Bitcoin perpetual contract on May 29 under Commission Regulation 40.3, and Kalshi began offering it in June. That approval established the regulator can treat a contract without an expiration date as a futures product under the Commodity Exchange Act, though it did not automatically authorize Kalshi to list perpetuals tied to other assets — each new product remains subject to CFTC requirements covering manipulation prevention, reliable price discovery and market participant protections.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig has defended the regulator's treatment of perpetual futures, saying existing U.S. law does not require every futures contract to have a predetermined expiration date and rejecting claims that regulated U.S. perpetuals would automatically offer the extreme leverage seen on some offshore platforms.
Weekend closure enters the trading-hours debate
Kalshi reportedly plans to make the WTI contract available continuously on weekdays, leaving the market closed during part of the weekend — a compromise between existing commodity trading hours and fully continuous markets. Supporters of longer hours argue continuous access lets participants respond immediately to geopolitical events and production disruptions. Critics warn overnight and weekend periods may bring lower liquidity, wider spreads and fewer market makers, concerns that matter more in energy markets because commercial participants use futures to hedge physical production and consumption.
A perpetual product could also behave differently from dated futures when the oil market moves into contango or backwardation, price relationships that reflect storage costs, supply conditions and demand for immediate delivery. Kalshi's filing will need to explain how the contract reflects those structures without relying on a single delivery month, making the funding or price adjustment formula central to the product's design.
CME looms over the expansion
Kalshi's move comes while CME Group disputes the CFTC's classification of perpetuals as futures, with CEO Terry Duffy arguing products without expiration dates should fall under the swaps framework created by the Dodd-Frank Act. The disagreement becomes more pointed when the underlying asset is WTI crude: CME operates the dominant regulated U.S. market for WTI futures, so a Kalshi perpetual would compete with an established commodity franchise rather than only offshore crypto exchanges.
The CFTC will need to assess Kalshi's contract independently of the commercial dispute, and approval is not guaranteed. Kalshi is already fighting on multiple legal fronts, from state gambling disputes now heading to the Supreme Court to the CME lawsuit it prompted. An oil perpetual would be its boldest product expansion yet, and the filing — whenever it lands — will test how far the CFTC's perpetual framework stretches.
