Ondo Finance has formally called on the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to allow perpetual futures tied to individual US-listed stocks to operate inside the United States, arguing that existing law already permits it.
Three letters, one argument
The tokenised real-world asset firm submitted three comment letters dated Aug. 24 to the SEC and CFTC, contending that the country’s current security futures framework can accommodate perpetual stock futures without requiring new legislation. The letters also address modern margining practices and the use of onchain market data.
Ondo pointed to its own Panama-based affiliate as proof of demand: the platform offers stablecoin-settled perpetual futures on individual US-listed equities exclusively to non-US customers and recorded 8 billion dollars in cumulative trading volume as of Aug. 14, roughly six weeks after launch.
The legal case for perpetuals
The firm’s central regulatory argument rests on the mechanics of funding payments. Ondo said that scheduled funding payments in perpetual contracts perform essentially the same anchoring role as expiration dates in traditional futures, keeping the contract price aligned with the underlying stock.
‘Nothing in the statutory definition of a security futures product requires a fixed expiration date,’ the company stated in its product-classification letter to the SEC.
Ondo further noted that many of the stocks underlying offshore perpetuals are principally traded on US exchanges. ‘Bringing that activity back to the U.S. should not be an open question; it’s something both agencies should actively pursue,’ the company said.
Ondo currently ranks fourth among tokenised real-world asset managers by distributed value, with approximately 2.6 billion dollars allocated as of early September, according to RWA.xyz data.
Regulators already moving toward onchain products
Ondo’s push arrives as both agencies independently reconsider how longstanding market rules apply to blockchain-native instruments. The SEC and CFTC signed a memorandum of understanding in March to harmonise oversight in areas where their jurisdictions overlap.
President Donald Trump said in August that CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid, the onchain perpetual futures exchange, into the United States in a ‘fully compliant and legal fashion.’ Neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid has publicly detailed how that access would function. HYPE, Hyperliquid’s native token, surged more than 20 percent following Trump’s remarks and has gained nearly 49 percent over the past month, trading around 81 dollars on Sept. 2, according to CoinGecko data.
Separately, the SEC on Tuesday proposed a sweeping overhaul of its transfer agent framework, citing rising demand for blockchain-native recordkeeping and tokenised securities as the agency reviews rules designed for older market infrastructure.
