Ondo Tells US Regulators Stock Perpetuals Already Fit the Law: Inside the 8 Billion USD Push to Move Them Onshore

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.