Kalshi Expands Beyond Prediction Markets With a Push Into Perpetual Futures

Kalshi built its name by letting you trade on real-world events. It could be whether a senator wins reelection, or whether a hurricane makes landfall. However, the company now wants you trading crypto prices too, without the offshore workarounds that have defined that market for years. 

In late May 2026, Kalshi became the first company in US history to offer perpetual futures under federal oversight, opening a product category worth tens of trillions of dollars a year to American traders for the first time. It is easily the biggest strategic pivot in Kalshi’s history. Offshore perpetual exchanges already move more money each year than the entire US options market. Kalshi wants a piece of that flow onshore. The early numbers suggest you are not the only one paying attention.

Kalshi’s move into perpetual futures is more than a new product launch. It signals an attempt to evolve from a prediction-market specialist into a broader regulated trading platform, with crypto derivatives potentially becoming a second major source of volume alongside event contracts.

From Election Bets to Crypto Derivatives

Kalshi launched in 2018 as a place to trade event contracts, essentially yes-or-no bets on real-world outcomes tied to elections and weather events. Co-founders Tarek Mansour and Luana Lopes Lara built the company around a hard-won regulatory approval. That approval has remained its core advantage ever since. That business grew fast. Sports contracts alone now make up more than 80% of the platform’s trading volume. The company’s annualized revenue reportedly hit $4 billion in July 2026, boosted heavily by trading tied to this summer’s World Cup. Event contracts settle once, on a fixed date. Kalshi’s leadership wanted a product that could keep you engaged around the clock instead.

Perpetual futures, known in the industry as “perps,” fit that need. They are derivatives with no expiration date. You take a long or short position on an asset’s price and hold it for as long as you keep enough collateral behind it. On May 29, 2026, the CFTC approved Kalshi’s BTCPERP contract, a perpetual futures contract referencing the spot price of bitcoin. Trading launched shortly afterward. The company has said it plans to list contracts on more than a dozen cryptocurrencies as approvals come through, though agricultural commodity perpetuals will not be part of the lineup.

Getting to Know Perpetual Futures

A traditional futures contract locks in a price for delivery on a specific date. A perpetual never expires, so exchanges use a funding rate to keep the contract price tethered to the spot market. On Kalshi, funding payments change hands between long and short traders every eight hours. When the perpetual price trades above spot, longs pay shorts. When it trades below spot, shorts pay longs. The cost of that funding can add up. During periods of strong bullish or bearish sentiment, rates can run to several percentage points of a position’s value over a single week.

Leverage is the other core feature. It is also the part that trips people up. You post collateral. That collateral then controls a much larger position, sometimes several times its own value. If the market moves against you by enough, your position gets liquidated automatically, wiping out your collateral. During a recent downturn, traders warned about the risks tied to leverage after nearly $1 billion in positions were liquidated in a single 24-hour stretch, with one trader reportedly losing $38 million in a day.

Getting Started and What New Users Should Check First

As Kalshi opens perpetual futures to a wider audience, it is also pulling in traders who have never used the platform before. If you are considering signing up, check what incentives are currently on offer before you fund an account. Welcome offers and deposit terms shift often. The figures quoted in a news story can go stale within weeks. A Kalshi promo code review from a site like SportsbookReview.com, which uses real experts to track these terms closely, will typically walk you through the current sign-up bonus and the code required at registration. It will also spell out how a deposit match lands in your account and what conditions apply before you can withdraw it. That detail matters here because Kalshi’s onboarding spans both its event contracts and its new perpetuals product, with different terms attached to each. Checking a current, independently maintained source before you commit funds is a sensible habit regardless of which side of the platform you plan to use first.

Why Regulation Is Kalshi’s Big Bet

Kalshi’s pitch rests on being the legal, onshore alternative to offshore perpetual exchanges that have operated in a gray area for years. Offshore perpetual futures volume exploded from $28 trillion in 2023 to more than $90 trillion in 2025, according to Kalshi’s own figures. Almost none of that volume touched a regulated US venue before this year. Institutions in particular have been boxed out. Compliance frameworks at large funds and registered advisors generally prohibit trading on unregulated foreign platforms. For you, that regulatory position is the whole point of the launch, since it is what lets a much wider pool of money reach the product at all.

That dynamic mirrors a broader shift happening across financial technology right now. Other platforms are also finding that investors reward the fintech consolidation wave toward compliance-native infrastructure over speed alone. Banking-as-a-service providers have seen a similar pattern. Investors have rewarded compliance-first providers building for scrutiny, rather than building around it. For a company weighing an IPO as soon as next year, that credibility will likely be crucial in winning over the institutional investors it will eventually need to court.

The Money Behind the Pivot

Kalshi has raised aggressively to fund this expansion. The company closed a $1 billion round at a $22 billion valuation in May 2026, months after topping out at $11 billion the previous December. By August, it was reportedly in talks for another raise that could value the company near $40 billion. Perpetual futures alone generated more than $5.5 billion in trading volume during their first two weeks live. The product reportedly gathered a waitlist exceeding one million people before launch.

If perpetual futures gain traction, Kalshi may no longer be defined primarily by election, sports and event markets. Instead, it could emerge as a broader derivatives platform competing for trading activity that has historically remained offshore.

None of this guarantees a smooth path. Regulators in several states have challenged whether Kalshi’s sports contracts amount to unlicensed gambling. That fight over jurisdiction is still working through the courts, even as the CFTC pushes to expand what Kalshi can list. For you as a trader, the practical takeaway is simpler: perpetual futures give Kalshi a second major product line, but the underlying rules around what it can offer and where are still being written in real time. Whether perps become as central to Kalshi’s business as sports contracts already are is the question worth watching over the next year.