CME Group Inc. (NASDAQ:CME) sued the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last week over the regulator’s decision to let prediction market Kalshi list perpetual futures, alleging the move violates federal law and has caused “textbook competitive injury.”

Kalshi’s crypto-tied perps cleared $8.5 billion in volume within weeks of launch, according to the Wall Street Journal, and the incumbent exchanges are watching their shares slide.

Perpetual futures, or “perps,” never expire and let traders pile on leverage that magnifies both gains and losses.

The Incumbents Are Feeling The Heat

CME’s Class A shares have dropped 12% since the CFTC’s late-May approval, while Cboe Global Markets (BATS:CBOE) has fallen 26%. Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE:ICE) and Nasdaq Inc. (NASDAQ:NDAQ) have slid 11% and 9%.

CME CEO Terry Duffy warned at a Piper Sandler conference this month that traders who do not understand the products could “get blown out.”

Traditional futures lean on margin calls, where a broker requests more collateral.

Perps instead auto-liquidate, selling positions off automatically during sharp drops to protect the platform.

The mechanic can fuel cascading selloffs, and one surprise tariff announcement reportedly erased more than $19 billion in leveraged positions.

Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour sees a different explanation.

He says Kalshi offers only around six times leverage, roughly comparable to traditional futures, and that the pushback is really about competition. “The incumbents don’t like them because now there’s competition,” he reportedly said.

Kalshi and Benzinga have an existing data collaboration agreement.

Wall Street Is Split On How To Respond

Not every incumbent is reaching for a lawsuit. Cboe is reportedly weighing whether to convert its continuous crypto futures into true perps, and ICE has said it would launch its own if institutions ask.

The cleanest way to play the boom may be Coinbase Global Inc. (NASDAQ:COIN), whose U.S. customers gained access to perpetual-style futures in July 2025, currently capped at 10x leverage on crypto.

The company is also expanding a global lineup of perps tied to stock indexes including AI, China and defense names, with up to 20x leverage on ETF products.

Coinbase says it has logged over $211 billion in notional volume on perp-style contracts since then.

For now the demand is real, and the old guard cannot agree on whether to fight or embrace the new product.

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