Multi-trillion-dollar offshore engine driving 90% of crypto trading arrives in America – and CME is suing to crush it

Coinbase began offering US perpetual-style futures on its CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange, starting with nano Bitcoin and Ethereum contracts that track spot prices, carry embedded leverage, and trade around the clock.

This is a financial product that's responsible for most of the crypto leverage in the world, and it's now crossed into the US market. Aside from bringing another way to bet on Bitcoin, it's also bringing the entire machinery that essentially set offshore price discovery for years.

The US market is now importing funding payments, continuous leverage, and automatic liquidations across several exchanges, each one built to different specifications.

Perpetual futures make up the large majority of crypto derivatives activity. Coinbase puts the figure at upwards of 90% of derivatives volume in some measures, with derivatives themselves accounting for roughly 80% of all crypto trading.

For years, all of that activity happened almost entirely on exchanges outside American oversight, and US traders who wanted in logged into offshore platforms through a VPN. The barrier broke on May 29, when the CFTC approved KalshiEX's BTCPERP as a futures contract referencing Bitcoin's spot price, and issued a policy statement inviting other exchanges to bring similar contracts through the same door.

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