CFTC Chair Teases Crypto Perpetual Futures in ‘the Next Month or so‘

Michael Selig, chair of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said the agency will soon address how to handle perpetual futures contracts for cryptocurrencies.

In a Tuesday panel hosted by the Milken Institute in Washington, DC, Selig said that the CFTC was working toward getting “true perpetual futures” in the United States “within the next month or so.”

The CFTC chair is currently the only Senate-confirmed commissioner, with no indication as of Tuesday that US President Donald Trump will nominate anyone to fill any of the agency’s four vacant commissioner slots.

“The prior administration drove a lot of these firms and the liquidity offshore,” said Selig in a panel discussion with SEC Chair Paul Atkins.

Selig added that the CFTC was working to provide guidance regarding prediction markets “in the very near future.” He claimed in February that the agency had “exclusive jurisdiction” over regulating platforms offering event contracts, pushing back against many state-level enforcement actions against companies including Kalshi and Polymarket.

Related: Can US lawmakers pass crypto market structure before the midterms?

Market structure bill will impact SEC and CFTC

Atkins addressed concerns related to the digital asset market structure bill moving through Congress, which, according to some experts, has effectively been put on hold amid discussions on ethics, stablecoin yield and tokenized equities. According to the SEC chair, the agency needed a “sense of Congress enshrined in statutory form” to “direct the courts where to go” and support the commission’s efforts on crypto.

“There’s only so much you can do without legal certainty from Congress,” Selig said in response to Atkins’ remarks.

As of Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee had not scheduled a markup to consider the market structure bill. The White House held the latest in a series of talks with industry leaders last week on stablecoin yield, but it was unclear whether those discussions would result in the legislation moving forward.

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