Ondo Finance Urges U.S. Regulators to Allow Perpetual Stock Futures Onshore

Ondo Finance is pressing U.S. regulators to let perpetual futures tied to individual stocks trade onshore, arguing that the products can already fit within the country’s existing security futures framework without the need for new rules. In three Aug. 24 comment letters to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the company said current rules can support perpetual stock futures while also accommodating modern margining practices and onchain market data. According to Cointelegraph, Ondo said its Panama-based affiliate already offers stablecoin-settled perpetual futures on individual US-listed stocks outside the United States, and the platform had recorded $8 billion in cumulative trading volume as of Aug. 14, about six weeks after launch. The firm also said scheduled funding payments can keep perpetual contracts aligned with the price of the underlying stocks, serving a role similar to expiration in traditional futures. “Nothing in the statutory definition of a security futures product requires a fixed expiration date,” Ondo said in its product-classification letter. The company added that many of the stocks underlying offshore perpetuals are primarily traded on US exchanges and said bringing that activity back to the U.S. should be actively pursued by both agencies. Ondo is one of the largest managers of tokenized real-world assets, ranking fourth with about $2.6 billion in distributed value as of Wednesday, according to RWA.xyz data. According to Cointelegraph, the proposal comes as U.S. regulators reassess how existing market rules apply to onchain products, including perpetual futures and tokenized securities. U.S. President Donald Trump said in August that CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring Hyperliquid into the United States in a “fully compliant and legal fashion.” Hyperliquid is known for its onchain perpetual futures market, although neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid has publicly explained how U.S. access would work. HYPE, the native token of Hyperliquid, rose more than 20% after Trump’s comments and has gained nearly 49% over the past month to trade around $81 on Wednesday, according to CoinGecko data. The SEC and CFTC have also increased coordination this year, signing a memorandum of understanding in March to harmonize oversight in areas where their jurisdictions overlap. On Tuesday, the SEC proposed changes to its decades-old transfer agent framework, citing rising demand for blockchain-native recordkeeping and tokenized securities in U.S. markets as it reviews rules built for older market infrastructure.