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Can US perpetual futures solve their identity crisis?

Market could fall under four different regulatory categories, with sharply diverging outcomes

Mamushkas lined up side by side, the big one reading ‘futures’ the small one reading ‘swaps’
Credit: Risk.net montage

When lawyers at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission set out their views on the legal nature of perpetual contracts in a March 2024 enforcement action, they left little room for ambiguity: “Perpetual futures are ‘swaps’ under the [Commodity Exchange] Act,” the agency’s attorneys wrote.

The CFTC had consistently taken that line since the Dodd-Frank Act’s revamp of derivatives regulation in 2011

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