Kraken Launches US-Regulated Perpetual Futures After CFTC Opens Market

Published by James Harris on June 15, 2026June 15, 2026

Kraken has launched CFTC-regulated perpetual futures for eligible US users through Kraken Pro, routing contracts via its recently acquired Bitnomial exchange. For the first time, American traders have a domestically regulated on-ramp to a product that generated over $60 trillion in global trading volume in 2025, almost entirely through offshore platforms outside US jurisdiction.

The regulatory opening here did not arrive quietly. The CFTC authorized Bitcoin perpetual futures in May, first approving contracts on prediction market Kalshi, which cleared more than $1 billion in perpetual volume within its first week, and then allowing Coinbase to connect US customers to global options and perpetual markets. Kraken is moving quickly inside that window. Payward, Kraken’s parent company, acquired Bitnomial in May 2026 and had already purchased futures brokerage NinjaTrader a year earlier, rebranding it as Kraken Derivatives US and registering it as a Futures Commission Merchant with the CFTC. The infrastructure was assembled before the regulatory green light fully materialized, which is why the rollout could happen at scale rather than in a limited pilot.

The product launches with nine assets including BTC, ETH, SOL, XRP, and ADA, uses an eight-hour funding rate cycle, and shares a wallet with Kraken’s existing CME-listed futures, meaning traders can run both position types against the same collateral.

Kraken’s head of derivatives told CoinDesk that adoption could follow the pattern set by spot Bitcoin ETFs: sophisticated traders first, institutional funds after internal compliance reviews clear. That framing matters because it signals Kraken is not pitching this primarily at retail. The line between a regulated derivatives venue and a prediction market is still being defined by the CFTC in real time, and each approved product adds to the precedent stack that makes the next approval easier to justify. For offshore exchanges that have dominated perpetual volume precisely because US regulation left a vacuum, the calculus is shifting.

Kraken plans to expand both the asset list and available collateral options over time. The exchange launched CME-listed crypto futures in July 2025 and added margin trading for eligible US clients in June 2026, so perpetuals represent the third leg of a derivatives build-out that has moved faster than most observers expected when Payward began acquiring regulated infrastructure two years ago.