Kalshi seeks approval to trade XRP, SHIB perpetual futures in U.S.
Kalshi is seeking approval in the United States to trade perpetual futures contracts based on XRP and Shiba Inu (SHIB).
On June 3 local time, blockchain media outlet The Crypto Basic reported that Kalshi submitted multiple cryptocurrency-related perpetual futures contracts to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) through a self-certification process.
The filing includes Solana (SOL), Stellar (XLM), Ethereum (ETH) and Dogecoin (DOGE), in addition to XRP and Shiba Inu. Market attention focused on XRP and Shiba Inu because their investor bases are particularly active. Kalshi presented a structure that would allow trading the two tokens’ price moves within the U.S. regulatory framework.
The underlying asset for the Shiba Inu contract is the spot price of SHIB in dollar terms. The official price benchmark is set as the “CF Shiba Inu-Dollar Spot Rate.” The product is designed to trade 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without an expiry. The contract size is 1,000,000 SHIB per contract. Prices are quoted in dollars per SHIB, and the minimum tick size is $0.0000000001.
Kalshi also included a mechanism to calculate a funding rate every 8 hours to prevent the perpetual futures price from diverging from the spot market. Depending on market conditions, holders of long positions can pay holders of short positions, or short holders can pay long holders. As a risk-management measure for large participants, it set a position accountability limit of $5 million.
The XRP contract also tracks the spot price in dollar terms. The official price benchmark is the “CME CF XRP-Dollar Real Time Index.” This product also trades 24 hours a day, with each contract representing 1 XRP. The minimum price fluctuation is $0.0001, and the value per tick was set at $0.0001 per contract. The position accountability limit is the same $5 million as for Shiba Inu.
Perpetual futures are derivatives that allow bets on future prices without an expiry date. The XRP and Shiba Inu products posted this time were shown as certified on the CFTC website, but they have not yet received approval for actual trading. After Kalshi’s bitcoin (BTC) perpetual futures were approved last week, market interest spread to other cryptocurrencies, but regulators made clear they would not apply the same standard across the board.
The CFTC signalled a cautious approach to perpetual futures based on cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin. The agency said, “We will determine approval on a case-by-case basis,” and stressed that “not all asset classes are suitable for perpetual futures products.” That means each contract must go through an individual review.
The market’s next focus is whether the XRP and Shiba Inu contracts submitted by Kalshi will become the second and third approvals after bitcoin. The filing can be seen as an attempt to broaden access to altcoin perpetual futures within the U.S. regulated market, but the outcome of the CFTC’s asset-by-asset review remains a variable before any actual listing.
