Ondo Finance is urging US regulators to let perpetual futures tied to American stocks trade onshore, arguing in formal comment letters that the products already fit inside the country’s existing security futures rules — no new legislation required.
By David Chen | September 2, 2026
In three comment letters dated August 24 to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Ondo said current rules can accommodate perpetual stock futures while accounting for modern margining practices and onchain market data, Cointelegraph reported Wednesday. The punchline for US investors: the offshore version of this market has already cleared 8 billion USD in cumulative trading volume in about six weeks — all of it outside American jurisdiction.
The Hook: Stock Perps Are Booming — Just Not in America
Perpetual futures — “perps” — are contracts with no expiration date that let traders bet on a stock’s price with leverage, around the clock. They are the workhorse product of crypto trading, and they have migrated to equities: offshore platforms now offer perpetuals on US-listed names like Nvidia and Tesla that trade 24/7, including nights and weekends when the New York Stock Exchange is closed.
Ondo’s Panama-based affiliate already offers stablecoin-settled perpetual futures on individual US-listed stocks outside the United States, and the platform recorded 8 billion USD in cumulative trading volume as of August 14, roughly six weeks after launch, according to volume data cited by Cointelegraph. As Ondo noted in its letters, many of the stocks underlying these offshore perpetuals are principally traded on US exchanges.
The Evidence: Three Letters and One Bold Legal Claim
- 3 comment letters — filed August 24 with the SEC and CFTC
- 8 billion USD — cumulative volume on Ondo’s offshore stock perps platform about six weeks after launch
- 2.6 billion USD — Ondo’s distributed value as a tokenized real-world asset manager, fourth-largest globally per RWA.xyz
- March — month the SEC and CFTC signed a memorandum of understanding to harmonize oversight
The boldest claim is legal. “Nothing in the statutory definition of a security futures product requires a fixed expiration date,” Ondo argued in its product-classification letter. Translation: regulators may not need Congress to act at all — the 2000-era rules that created security futures arguably already cover contracts that never expire.
On the mechanics, Ondo said scheduled funding payments can keep perpetual contracts aligned with the price of their underlying stocks, performing a similar function to expiration dates in traditional futures. Funding payments are small periodic transfers between long and short traders that tug the contract price back toward the real stock price.
The Core Conflict: “Bring That Activity Back to the US”
“Bringing that activity back to the US should not be an open question; it’s something both agencies should actively pursue,” Ondo wrote. The subtext is competitive: American regulators have watched offshore venues capture enormous volume in products tied to American companies, with no US oversight, no US investor protections and no US tax reporting.
The timing is favorable. The SEC and CFTC have stepped up coordination this year, signing a memorandum of understanding in March to harmonize oversight where their jurisdictions overlap. In August, President Donald Trump said CFTC Chair Michael Selig was working to bring the onchain perps platform Hyperliquid to the United States in a “fully compliant and legal fashion” — though neither the CFTC nor Hyperliquid has detailed how US access would work. And on Tuesday, the SEC proposed overhauling its decades-old transfer agent framework, citing growing demand for blockchain-native recordkeeping and tokenized securities.
Market Implications: Why DeFi Investors Should Care
Ondo is not a fringe voice. It ranks fourth among tokenized real-world asset managers with about 2.6 billion USD in distributed value as of Wednesday, per RWA.xyz data cited by Cointelegraph. When a firm of that size files formal comment letters, it is effectively drafting the playbook regulators may follow.
If the agencies agree, the consequences ripple outward: US-regulated stock perps would bring 24/7 leveraged equity trading to compliant venues, give DeFi protocols a legal path to list the products, and let ordinary US investors access a market that currently requires offshore accounts and stablecoins. The risk is the mirror image — perpetual futures are highly leveraged instruments, and the offshore boom has been fueled by traders who can blow up quickly. Bringing them onshore means bringing the losses onshore too.
The Verdict
Ondo’s argument reduces to one sentence: the market already exists, the law arguably already allows it, and every week of delay sends more volume offshore. With both agencies actively rethinking onchain market rules, stock perps onshore look less like an if and more like a when. For DeFi investors, the firms building compliant bridges — like Ondo — are positioning themselves as the toll booths for whatever crosses.
The cryptocurrency market remains highly volatile. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.
8 billion in six weeks on offshore stock perps and the SEC is still deciding if rules it already has cover them. classic
comment letters are free. ondo just wants to be the compliant front door for a market already running without them
the compliant front door IS the product though. whoever gets the no-new-legislation ruling first owns the onshore order flow, comment letters are cheap optionality
the front door thesis only pays if the ruling is exclusive. if the sec just says fine for everyone, ondo spent its legal budget doing market prep for competitors
even if the ruling is not exclusive, being first with the paperwork buys ondo a seat at every hearing that follows. cheap optionality either way you slice it
Cheap optionality is exactly right. Three letters to the SEC for a shot at owning onshore flow is the best trade Ondo made all year.
nvda perps on a sunday night with stablecoin settlement sounds fun until the first funding squeeze wipes out half the book
8 billion in six weeks on offshore perps and the SEC is still just collecting comment letters. every month they wait, that volume compounds somewhere they can’t touch it
bold of you to assume they’d rather collect the fees than protect their turf lol
and that 8 billion is only the trackable flow. half the offshore nvda perp desks file nothing anywhere, the real number is comfortably bigger
Read the actual letters. Ondo’s whole argument is that existing security futures rules already allow this if regulators interpret them sensibly. Bold framing, but a version of it worked for the ETFs.
24/7 NVDA perps with leverage sound amazing until you’re down 40% on a sunday night with no circuit breaker. there’s a reason regular markets close
circuit breakers exist on offshore venues too, they just trigger at your liquidation price instead. the real risk is weekend funding, not the clock
weekend funding is the real tax on 24/7 perps. holding nvda through a dead sunday can cost you more than the move itself
the circuit breaker point is the one regulators will actually grab onto. regular markets close because humans sleep, offshore perps never do
the clock argument is weaker than it looks. markets that close still gap through the weekend and eat you, a perp at least lets you exit mid move
ondos read is that sec and cftc both already have jurisdiction, they just have to share it. that coordination is the real bottleneck, the rules exist
8 billion offshore in six weeks and none of it touched us margin rules or us taxes. the sec can read that number same as everyone else
the 8 billion cuts both ways tho. regulators can read a number that big as proof offshore venues already took the head start, not as a reason to hurry
or they read 8 billion as volume that must be recaptured before it compounds further. six weeks to that number, imagine month twelve
ondo leaning on the ETF playbook again. worked for spot btc, but a leveraged perp is a much harder sell than a vanilla fund. expecting a carve out at best
ondo’s own affiliate already running the offshore version from panama while asking dc for the front door is a bold look. regulators notice that kind of thing
running the offshore book from panama while lobbying dc is only a bad look if the letters get denied. approve them and suddenly its called foresight
the panama affiliate is probably the reason they filed at all. build the leverage offshore, show dc exactly what its missing, then swap the panama book for a new york license. its the same playbook citadel ran
security futures rules keep leverage tiny in practice. offshore perp desks run 10x+. the onshore version will be a different product wearing the same name
10x offshore vs whatever margin security futures rules allow, exactly. the onshore version will be a perp in name only. still beats nothing for people who cant touch offshore desks
The 8 billion daily figure is the entire argument. Congress does not move without a number that big getting repeated in hearings, and Ondo knows exactly what they just handed committee staff.